He sat down on a toadstool, and looked very glum. He could hear the
other Brownies shouting at the game, and that made him feel worse. Then
he heard a great uproar, and voices yelling "A home run!" "A home run!"
That drove him wild. He had been whittling the edge of the toadstool
with his knife, and now he slashed off a big piece of the cap, he was so
mad.
Then up he got and said to the Cows: "See here, you fool Cows, I can't
stay here for ever trying to keep you from eating poison, but I'll do
this much. I'll stamp all the good-to-eat leaves with a mark that will
be your guide."
[Illustration: The Shamrock]
So he made a rubber stamp out of part of the toadstool he was sitting
on, and stamped every Clover leaf in that pasture, so the Cows could be
sure, then skipped away to the ball game.
When Mother Carey heard of his running away from his job, she was very
angry. She said: "Well, you Bad Brownie, you should be ashamed, but that
white mark was a good idea so I'll forgive you, if you go round, and put
it on every Clover leaf in the world."
He had to do it, though it looked like an endless task, and he never
would have finished it, had not the other Brownies all over the world
come to help him; so it was done at last. And that is the reason that
every Clover leaf to-day has on it the white mark like an arrowhead, the
Brownie sign for "good-to eat."
The Cows get along better now, but still they are very stupid; they go
munching ahead without thinking, and will even eat the blossoms which
belong to the Bees. And the Bees have to buzz very loudly and even sting
the Cows on their noses to keep them from stealing the bee-food. The
good little Bugs underground have the best time, for there the Cows can
not harm them, and the Bees never come near. They eat when they are
hungry and sleep when they are cold, which is their idea of a good time;
so except for some little quarrels between the Cows and the Bees they
have all gotten along very well ever since.
TALE 20
The Shamrock and Her Three Sisters
[Illustration: Yellow-haired Hob. Shamrock's blonde sister]
The Shamrock is really the White Clover. It is much the same shape as
the Red Clover, and has the same food bags in its cellar. It is just as
good for Cows and even better for Bees; so the Brownie stamped all its
leaves with the white arrow mark, as you can plainly see. This plant,
as you know, is the emblem of Ireland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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