The next day she again played among the flowers in the warm sunshine, and many more days were spent in the same manner. Gerda knew every flower in the garden, but, numerous as they were, it seemed to her that one was wanting, she could not tell which. She was sitting one day, looking at her hostess’s hat, which had flowers painted on it, and, behold, the loveliest among them was a rose! The old lady had entirely forgotten the painted rose on her hat, when she made the real roses to disappear from her garden and sink into the ground. This is often the case when things are done hastily. ‘What,’ cried Gerda ‘are there no roses in the garden?’ And she ran from one bed to another, sought and sought again, but no rose was to be found. She sat down and wept, and it so chanced that her tears fell on a spot where a rose-tree had formerly stood, and as soon as her warm tears had moistened the earth, the bush shot up anew, as fresh and as blooming as it was before it had sunk into the ground; and Gerda threw her arms around it, kissed the blossoms, and immediately recalled to memory the beautiful roses at home, and her little playfellow Kay. ‘Oh, how could I stay here so long!’ exclaimed the little maiden. ‘I left my home to seek for Kay. Do you know where he is?’ she asked of the roses; ‘think you that he is dead?’ ‘Dead he is not,’ said the roses. ‘We have been down in the earth; the dead are there, but not Kay.’ ‘I thank you,’ said little Gerda, and she went to the other flowers, bent low over their cups, and asked, ‘Know you not where little Kay is?’ But every flower stood in the sunshine dreaming its own little tale. They related their stories to Gerda, but none of them knew anything of Kay. ‘And what think you?’ said the tiger-lily. ‘Listen to the drums beating, boom! boom! They have but two notes, always boom! boom! Listen to the dirge the women are singing! Listen to the chorus of priests! Enveloped in her long red robes stands the Hindoo wife on the funeral pile; the flames blaze around her and her dead husband, but the Hindoo wife thinks not of the dead. She thinks only of the living, and the anguish which consumes her spirit is keener than the fire which will soon reduce her body to ashes. [Illustration] Can the flame of the heart expire amid the flames of the funeral pile?’ ‘I do not understand that at all!’ said little Gerda. ‘That is my tale!’ said the tiger-lily. ‘What says the convolvulus?’