o expression, no animation.
So lofty and so exclusive, and forever grumbling to each other in
their hoarse old Scandinavian, which it gives one the croup even to
listen to! Of what possible use _can_ they be?"

This was what the maple said to the birch one day when the Summer and
her patience with her sombre neighbor were on the wane--one day when
there was a gleam of golden pumpkins in the tawny corn stubble beyond
the wood, and the purpling grapes hung ripening over the old stone
wall that lay between, and the maple had brightened its summer dress
with a gay little leaf set here and there in its shining folds.

The birch agreed with the maple about the pines, and the maple went
glibly on.

"I've ordered my autumn dresses--a different one for each day in the
week. Just think of those horrid pines never altering the fashion of
their stiff old plaiting."

"We shall not be obliged to remain in this dull place much longer,"
said the tall pines loftily to each other, looking quite over the
heads of the maple and the birch. "We shall soon be crossing the
ocean, and then our lives will have just begun. We simply vegetate
here."

"Ho, ho!" laughed the maple and the birch behind their fluttering
green fans, pretending to be greatly amused at what the west wind was
saying to them.

Now, though the trees spoke a different language, yet each understood
perfectly well what the other said; so their rudeness was quite
inexcusable.

When the summer was ended, the maple began to put on her gorgeous
autumn dresses; but the pines looked much at the sky, and paid little
heed to the maple. The other trees on the hill-side, quite faded with
their summer gayeties, looked on languidly in the still autumn days at
the maple's brilliant toilets.

Soon the cold rains swept in from the sea, blurring the wood vistas;
and when they were gone, the frost came in the midnight, with its
unwelcome message, and later the snow lay white above all the faded
and fallen crimson and gold of the maple and the tarnished silver of
the birch.

All the trees, brown and bare now, moaned in the wintry wind--all but
the tall pines, and they were crossing the ocean; their lives had
begun. The little saplings remained behind, but with their heads
perked stiffly up above the snow; they had the air of expecting
somebody.

They were not disappointed. One sunny morning, a boy and a girl came
singing through the wood paths, each in a pair of high-topped boots,