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Updated: May 12, 2025
The Banksiae, who are little, frank, honest-hearted creatures, and say out what they think, as such plebeian people will, used to tell her roundly she was thankless for the supreme excellence of her lot.
Banksiae will flourish and be content anywhere, they are such easily pleased creatures; and when you cut them they thrive on it, which shows a very plebeian and pachydermatous temper; and they laugh all over in the face of an April day, shaking their little golden clusters of blossom in such a merry way that the Rose Tree, who was herself very reserved and thorny, had really scruples about speaking to them.
The saucy Banksiae laughed, running over their wires that they cling to like little children. "You have got your wish," they said. "You are going to be a great lady; they have made you into a Rosa Indica!" A tea rose! Was it possible? Was she going to belong at last to that grand and graceful order, which she had envied so long and vainly from afar?
Was she, indeed, no more mere simple Rosa Damascena? She felt so happy she could hardly breathe. She thought it was her happiness that stifled her; in real matter of fact it was the tight bands in which the gardener had bound her. "Oh, what joy!" she thought, though she still felt very uncomfortable, but not for the world would she ever have admitted it to the Banksiae.
What should an old death's-head moth know, whose eyes were so weak that a farthing rushlight blinded them? So she lifted herself a little higher, and would not even see that the Banksiae were nodding to her; and as for her old friend the blackbird, how vulgar he looked, bobbing up and down hunting worms and woodlice! could anything be more outrageously vulgar than that staring yellow beak of his?
She had never felt the knife before, when she had been only Rosa Damascena: it hurt her very much, and her heart bled. "Il faut souffrir pour etre belle," said the Banksiae in a good- natured effort at consolation.
She thought of the sweet fresh air of the old garden where the Banksiae were. The garden was quite near, but the windows were closed, and there were the walls now between her and it. She was in the place of honor. But she grew sick and waxed faint as the burning rays of the artificial light shining above her seemed to pierce through and through her like lances of steel. The night seemed very long.
One day the gardener approached and stood and looked at her: then all at once she felt a sharp stab in her from his knife, and a vivid pain ran downward through her stem. She did not know it, but gardeners and gods "this way grant prayer." "Has not something happened to me?" she asked of the little Banksiae; for she felt very odd all over her; and when you are unwell you cannot be very haughty.
The Banksiae asked her how she felt, but she would not deign even to reply; and when a friendly blackbird, who had often picked grubs off her leaves, came and sang to her, she kept silent: a Rosa Indica was far above a blackbird. "Next time you want a caterpillar taken away, he may eat you for ME!" said the blackbird, and flew off in a huff.
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