“Sophie,you'll really have to get up,and be satisfied to sleep in the drawer tonight,because my poor flowers are ill.Maybe,if I let them sleep in your bed tonight,they will get well again.”
When she took the doll up,Sophie looked as cross as could be,and didn't say a word.She was sulky because she couldn't keep her own bed.
Ida put the flowers to bed,and tucked the little covers around them.She told them to be good and lie still,while she made them some tea,so that they would get well and be up and about tomorrow.She carefully drew the curtains around the little bed,so the morning sun would not shine in their faces.
All evening long she kept thinking of what the student had said,before she climbed into bed herself.She peeped through the window curtains at the fine potted plants that belonged to her mother-hyacinths and tulips,too.She whispered very softly,“I know you are going to the ball tonight.”
But the flowers pretended not to understand her.They didn't move a leaf.But little Ida knew all about them.
After she was in bed,she lay there for a long while thinking how pleasant it must be to see the flowers dance in the King's castle.“Were my flowers really there?”she wondered.Then she fell asleep.When she woke up again in the night,she had been dreaming of the flowers,and of the student,and of the prosy councilor who had scolded him and had said it was all silly nonsense.It was very still in the bedroom where Ida was.The night lamp glowed on the table,and Ida's mother and father were asleep.
“Are my flowers still asleep in Sophie's bed?”Ida wondered.“That's what I'd like to know.”
She lifted herself a little higher on her pillow,and looked towards the door which stood half open.In there were her flowers and all her toys.She listened,and it seemed to her that someone was playing the piano,very softly and more beautifully than she had ever heard it played.
“I'm perfectly sure that those flowers are all dancing,”she said to herself.“Oh,my goodness,wouldn't I love to see them.”But she did not dare get up,because that might awaken her father and mother.
“I do wish the flowers would come in here!”she thought.But they didn't.The music kept playing,and it sounded so lovely that she couldn't stay in bed another minute.She tiptoed to the door,and peeped into the next room.Oh,how funny-what a sight she saw there!
No night lamp burned in the next room,but it was well lighted just the same.The moonlight streamed through the window,upon the middle of the floor,and it was almost as bright as day.The hyacinths and the tulips lined up in two long rows across the floor.Not one was left by the window.The flowerpots stood there empty,while the flowers danced gracefully around the room,making a complete chain and holding each other by their long green leaves as they swung around.
At the piano sat a tall yellow lily.Little Ida remembered it from last summer,because the student had sad,“Doesn't that lily look just like Miss Line?”Everyone had laughed at the time,but now little Ida noticed that there was a most striking resemblance.When the lily played it had the very same mannerisms as the young lady,sometimes bending its long,yellow face to one side,sometimes to the other,and nodding in time with the lovely music.
No one suspected that little Ida was there.She saw a nimble blue crocus jump up on the table where her toys were,go straight to the doll's bed,and throw back the curtains.The sick flowers lay there,but they got up at once,and nodded down to the others that they also wanted to dance.The old chimney-sweep doll,whose lower lip was broken,rose and made a bow to the pretty flowers.They looked quite themselves again as they jumped down to join the others and have a good time.
It seemed as if something clattered off the table.Little Ida looked,and saw that the birch wand,that had been left over from Mardigras time,was jumping down as if he thought he were a flower too.The wand did cut quite a flowery figure,with his paper rosettes and,to top him off,a little wax figure who had a broad trimmed hat just like the one that the councilor wore.
The wand skipped about on his three red wooden legs,and stamped them as hard as he could,for he was dancing the mazurka.The flowers could not dance it,because they were too light to stamp as he did.