What Came of Picking Flowers



There was once a woman who had three daughters whom she loved
very much. One day the eldest was walking in a water-meadow, when
she saw a pink growing in the stream. She stooped to pick the
flower, but her hand had scarcely touched it, when she vanished
altogether. The next morning the second sister went out into the
meadow, to see if she could find any traces of the lost girl, and
as a branch of lovely roses lay trailing across her path, she
bent down to move it away, and in so doing, could not resist
plucking one of the roses. In a moment she too had disappeared.
Wondering what could have become of her two sisters, the youngest
followed in their footsteps, and fell a victim to a branch of
delicious white jessamine. So the old woman was left without any
daughters at all.

She wept, and wept, and wept, all day and all night, and went on
weeping so long, that her son, who had been a little boy when his
sisters disappeared, grew up to be a tall youth. Then one night
he asked his mother to tell him what was the matter.

When he had heard the whole story, he said, ‘Give me your
blessing, mother, and I will go and search the world till I find
them.'

So he set forth, and after he had travelled several miles without
any adventures, he came upon three big boys fighting in the road.