Weed or Posy by Hilda Richmond

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 30, 1907

Weed or Posy

By Hilda Richmond

The rain was pouring down outside, and indoors the weather was just about as gloomy. Aunt Helen knew that grandma was not feeling very well, and the noise disturbed her, so she proposed all the quiet games she knew, but the children would not be persuaded.

“I know a new game,” she said at last. “It is called ‘Garden.’ I will be the gardener, and you may be the plants.”

“I want to be a rose,” said Mabel. “Roses are so lovely.”

“I won’t play a silly game like that,” said Ned. “It’s no fun.”

“You can be a thistle,” said May, quickly. “Every garden has a few weeds.”

“I’ll be a nettle,” said Agnes. “I don’t feel a bit like being good this horrid afternoon.”

So the gardener went all around naming the plants, and in a few minutes everything was as cozy and comfortable as could be. The thistle and the nettle grumbled a little, but the other plants behaved so nicely that no one paid much attention to them. The flowers in the garden are always prettier than the weeds, so the two lonely weeds had rather a hard time of it in the new play.

“We are playing a new game, mama,” cried Mabel, when her mother came in to see why everything was so quiet. “Aunt Helen taught it to us, and it’s lots of fun. We are all plants in a garden. Can you guess our names?”

“I should say this little girl is a touch-me-not,” said mama, laying her hand on Agnes’s head. “She doesn’t look like a violet or a rose.”

Even Agnes had to laugh. “I’m tired of being a nettle,” she said. “I’d like to be something nice, too.”

Mama did not guess very many of the names, but she thought it a very nice game, and said it was time to water the garden. Instead of the big watering-pot, filled with warm rain-water, she brought in a tall glass pitcher filled with pink lemonade, and the children did not drink as plants do, but they enjoyed the shower very much.

“The thistle has turned into a sunflower,” said Aunt Helen, with a smile. “I wish all the weeds in my garden would turn to flowers after a shower, for I don’t like to have them in my nice beds.”

“I’m never going to be a weed again,” said Agnes. “It isn’t half as nice as being a posy.”—Hilda Richmond.