Since he loved flowers as he loved
everything."
So that evening, about an hour before sunset time, they were all carried
in litters to the Garden of the New Year, about a mile beyond the city.
It was a most peaceful, lovely spot, right up on the hillside with a
splendid view from it of valley and mountain and river. A fresh bubbling
spring ran through it, and beneath the Judas trees, whose leafless
branches were flushed with pink blossoms, stretched great carpets of
spring flowers.
"Pluck him yonder tulips, Mirak," said Dearest-Lady with a smile. "He
loved to count their kinds and those--as he wrote--are 'yellow, double,
and scented like a rose'!"
And the boy who was to grow to be a greater man even than his
grandfather, though he could scarcely be a more lovable one, plucked a
posy of the tulips and laid them on the plain marble slab which bore
nothing but the words, "Heaven is the eternal home of the Emperor
Babar." And when Bija, with many a little feminine ceremonial, had
deposited her nosegay of sweet violets, and Head-nurse and Foster-mother
had offered up their respects, they all went and sat down on a grassy
spot, and Dearest-Lady, who was always full of youthful curiosities
concerning all things, began to question Roy, who as a mere lad had been
allowed to come with them, as to what he could remember of the time
before he was picked up in the desert.
"Hold my hand, child, and think," she said at last, "mayhap it may come
to thee then.
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