“It is the flower of Scotland,” she said. “It blooms in the scutcheon of my
country. Give me yonder flower.”
And he brought the fairest blossom, and pricked his fingers as completely
as if it had grown on the sharpest rose bush.
She placed the thistle-flower in the buttonhole of the young man, and he
felt himself highly honored. Each of the other young gentlemen would
willingly have given his own beautiful flower to have worn this one,
presented by the fair hand of the Scottish maiden. And if the son of the
house felt himself honored, what were the feelings of the Thistle bush? It
seemed to him as if dew and sunshine were streaming through him.
“I am something more than I knew of,” said the Thistle to itself. “I
suppose my right place is really inside the palings, and not outside. One is
often strangely placed in this world; but now I have at least managed to get
one of my people within the pale, and indeed into a buttonhole!”
The Thistle told this event to every blossom that unfolded itself, and not
many days had gone by before the Thistle heard, not from men, not from
the twittering of the birds, but from the air itself, which stores up the
sounds, and carries them far around-out of the most retired walks of the
garden, and out of the rooms of the house, in which doors and windows
stood open, that the young gentleman who had received the thistle-flower
from the hand of the fair Scottish maiden had also now received the heart
and hand of the lady in question. They were a handsome pair-it was a good
match.
“That match I made up!” said the Thistle; and he thought of the flower he
had given for the buttonhole. Every flower that opened heard of this
occurrence.
“I shall certainly be transplanted into the garden,” thought the Thistle,
and perhaps put into a pot, which crowds one in. “That is said to be the
greatest of all honors.”
And the Thistle pictured this to himself in such a lively manner, that at
last he said, with full conviction, “I am to be transplanted into a pot.”
