"And the wish came true. Never a flower in the garden of the princess bloomed from that day. Their buds dropped, their leaves shrank, and many of them hid away where they would not be seen by passers-by. Some slipped away into the water and became seaweeds. Some hid in the deep woods, and crept into dark places, and became ferns. Others, growing smaller each year, became moss. Some hid among the rocks of the cliff and became lichens. And some, who wanted to be useful if they could not bloom, scattered themselves over the woods and fields and became mushrooms. But some of these were of bitter or sharp nature, and these we cannot eat. And some grew wicked and vicious, and these are poison. One of them, the Amanita, which had bloomed as a great golden white-spotted flower in the garden of the princess, became the most vicious of all. It kept much of its color, which now makes people shun it because it is a sign of deadly poison." "And will the flowers that grew in the garden of the princess never bloom again?" "Never, unless some one who cares more for them than she did shall wish to see them." "But how can I care so much unless I can see them?" asked little Prue. "Perhaps that is why they will never bloom again," said Davy. SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER I A FLOWER REALLY HAS CLOTHES THE little gardens were in quite a bad way when Davy and Prue came back from the seashore. Everything had done well, even to the weeds, and that was just the trouble. It took two whole days, working when the sun was not so very hot, to get the beds in shape, and the Chief Gardener had to work, too, very hard. But by and by everything was clean and beautiful again, and the seat under the peach-tree was a finer place than ever, because there were more things in bloom, and everything had become more beautiful. One day Davy came to the seat, where little Prue and the Chief Gardener were resting, with a double carnation in his hand. "I wish you would look at this," he said. "I can't tell petals from stamens." The Chief Gardener took the flower, and slowly pulled it to pieces. "Well, no," he said; "it isn't the easiest thing to do, though, of course, those anther-looking things must belong to stamens." "But the filaments are like petals," objected Davy. "Yes, and here are others like them, though they have no anthers. Those are supposed to be stamens, too, or, at least, they were stamens, once." Davy looked puzzled. "You remember I told you once, Davy, that a flower was only one form of a leaf--a leaf intended to make the plant beautiful, and to make it bear seed. Well, in some plants, especially cultivated ones, the flower-leaves seem to get rather mixed in their parts." The Chief Gardener picked a scarlet canna that grew near.