panions, both pines and firs. It did not heed the warm
sun and the fresh air, or notice the little peasant children who ran
about chattering when they came out to gather wild strawberries and
raspberries. Often they found a whole basketful and strung strawberries
on a straw; they would sit down by the little fir-tree and say, 'What a
pretty little one this is!' The tree did not like that at all.

By the next year it had grown a whole ring taller, and the year after
that another ring more, for you can always tell a fir-tree's age from
its rings.

'Oh! if I were only a great tree like the others!' sighed the little
fir-tree, 'then I could stretch out my branches far and wide and look
out into the great world! The birds would build their nests in my
branches, and when the wind blew I would bow to it politely just like
the others!' It took no pleasure in the sunshine, nor in the birds, nor
in the rose-coloured clouds that sailed over it at dawn and at sunset.
Then the winter came, and the snow lay white and sparkling all around,
and a hare would come and spring right over the little fir-tree, which
annoyed it very much. But when two more winters had passed the fir-tree
was so tall that the hare had to run round it. 'Ah! to grow and grow,
and become great and old! that is the only pleasure in life,' thought
the tree. In the autumn the woodcutters used to come and hew some of the
tallest trees; this happened every year, and the young fir-tree would
shiver as the magnificent trees fell crashing and crackling to the
ground, their branches hewn off, and the great trunks left bare, so that
they were almost unrecognisable. But then they were laid on waggons
and dragged out of the wood by horses. 'Where are they going? What will
happen to them?'

In spring, when the swallows and storks came, the fir-tree asked them,
'Do you know where they were taken? Have you met them?'

The swallows knew nothing of them, but the stork nodded his head
thoughtfully, saying, 'I think I know. I met many new ships as I flew
from Egypt; there were splendid masts on the ships. I'll wager those
were they! They had the scent of fir-trees. Ah! those are grand, grand!'

'Oh! if I were only big enough to sail away over the sea too! What sort
of thing is the sea? what does it look like?'

'Oh! it would take much too long to tell you all that,' said the stork,
and off he went.

'Rejoice in your youth,' said the sunbeams, 'rejoice in the sweet
growing t