Part 5

The rose-tree swooned and drooped! A servant’s rough hand shook down its worn beauty into a heap of fallen leaves. When they carried her out dead in the morning, the little Banksia-buds, safe hidden from the frost within their stems, waiting to come forth when the summer should come, murmured to one another:

“She had her wish; she was great. This way the gods grant foolish prayers, and punish discontent!”

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.