the fit seized him.

Not until the morning did the storm grow weary and go down.

"Now you can have peace for _this_ time," he said. "I am going down till
we have our spring-cleaning. Then we can have another dance, if there
are any of you left by then."

And the leaves went to rest and lay like a thick carpet over the whole
earth.

The anemones felt that it had grown delightfully warm:

"I wonder if Dame Spring can have come yet?" they asked one another.

"I haven't my buds ready!" cried one of them.

"No more have I! No more have I!" exclaimed the others in chorus.

But one of them took courage and just peeped out above the ground.

"Good-morning!" cried the withered beech-leaves. "It's rather too early,
young lady: if only you don't come to any harm!"

"Isn't that Dame Spring?" asked the anemone.

"Not just yet," replied the beech-leaves. "It's we, the green leaves you
were so angry with in the summer. Now we have lost our brightness and
have not much left to make a show of. We have enjoyed our youth and had
our fling, you know. And now we are lying here and protecting all the
little flowers in the ground against the winter."

"And meanwhile I am standing and freezing in my bare branches," said the
beech, crossly.

The anemones talked about it down in the earth and thought it very nice:

"Those dear beech-leaves!" they said.

"Mind you remember it next summer, when I come into leaf," said the
beech.

"We will, we will!" whispered the anemones.

For that sort of thing is promised, but the promise is never kept.

[Illustration]

The WOOD and the HEATH

1

There was once a beautiful wood, filled with thousands of slender trunks
and with singing and whispering in her dark tree-tops.

She was surrounded by field and meadow; and there the farmer had built
his house. And field and meadow were good and green; and the farmer was
hard-working and grateful for the crops which he brought home. But the
wood stood like a lady of the manor, high above them all.

In the winter-time the fields lay flat and miserable, the meadow was
merely one great lake with ice upon it and the farmer sat huddled in the
chimney-corner; but the wood just stood straight and placid with her
bare branches and let the weather storm and snow as it pleased. In the
spring, both meadow and field turned green and the farmer came out and
began to plough and sow. But the wood burst forth into so great a
splendour that no one