When Cucu woke up bright
and early and said good-morning to his mother, she did not reply. He
turned his head to look at her. Oh, frightful sight! she hung to the
trellis wilted and dead; her green dress was brown and torn, but her
hard and wrinkled hand still grasped poor Cucu's cap.
After the sun had been up some hours, a lady came into the garden and
approached the home of the Cucurbita family.
"Oh, you beauty!" she cried, "what a lovely basket I shall make of you!"
and, placing a hand on each of Cucu's cheeks, she gave him a slight
twist,--his mother's fingers let go; he was free. The lady put him in
her basket, and now he was really setting off on his travels.
This was, in fact, only the beginning of his career. The lady with a
sharp knife lifted his cap from his head; then she painted him all over
a pale green. After the paint was dry, she bored three holes in his
sides. My! how it hurt! but it was soon over, and she had fastened three
slender chains through them, and hung the little Prince up in a sunny
window. "What next?" he wondered. If he had got to hang here all his
life, it wouldn't be much better than the old trellis. But that wasn't
the end, for his mistress filled him with nice black earth, and planted
delicate little ferns and runaway-robins which climbed over and twined
lovingly round his face. They patted his cheeks with their soft little
hands, and whispered pretty stories of the woods they had come from.
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