not
so green as I was. I am turning yellow--but yellow is the colour of gold,
and I don't object to looking like gold."

"You will soon be ripe," said its friend.

"And what will happen then?"

"The reaping-machine will come and cut you down, and other strange things
will happen."

"There I make a stand," said the proud ear, "I will _not_ be cut down."

But it was just as the wise ear said it would be. Not long after a
reaping-machine was brought and driven back and forth in the fields, and
down went all the wheat ears before the great knives. But it did not hurt
the wheat, of course, and only the proud ear felt angry.

"I am the colour of gold," it said, "and yet they have dared to cut me
down. What will they do next, I wonder?"

What they did next was to bunch it up with other wheat and tie it
and stack it together, and then it was carried in a waggon and laid
in the barn.

Then there was a great bustle after a while. The farmer's wife and
daughters and her two servants began to work as hard as they could.

"The threshers are coming," they said, "and we must make plenty of things
for them to eat."

So they made pies and cakes and bread until their cupboards were full;
and surely enough the threshers did come with the threshing-machine,
which was painted red, and went "Puff! puff! puff! rattle! rattle!" all
the time. And the proud wheat was threshed out by it, and found itself in
grains again and very much out of breath.

"I look almost as I was at first," it said; "only there are so many of
me. I am grander than ever now. I was only one grain of wheat at first,
and now I am at least fifty."

When it was put into a sack, it managed to get all its grains together in
one place, so that it might feel as grand as possible. It was so proud
that it felt grand, however much it was knocked about.

It did not lie in the sack very long this time before something else
happened. One morning it heard the farmer's wife saying to the
coloured boy:

"Take this yere sack of wheat to the mill, Jerry. I want to try it when I
make that thar cake for the boarders. Them two children from Washington
city are powerful hands for cake."

So Jerry lifted the sack up and threw it over his shoulder, and carried
it out into the spring-waggon.

"Now we are going to travel," said the proud wheat "Don't let us be
separated."

At that minute, there were heard two young voices, shouting:--

"Jerry, take us in the waggon! Let us g