nity," said the hazel-bush.

"The whole community," whispered the blades of grass.

"I daresay," said the wind. "But I am not what you take me for. You
believe that I am my own master, because I come shifting and shifting
about and sometimes blow gently and sometimes hard and am sometimes mild
and sometimes keen. But I am merely a dog that comes when his master
calls."

"Who is your master then?" asked the linnet. "I will go to him, even if
he lives at the end of the earth."

"Ah ... if _that_ were enough!" said the wind. "My master is the sun. I
run my race at his behest. When he shines really strong anywhere, than
I go up with the warm air and fetch cold air from somewhere else and fly
with it along the earth. Whether it be east or west does not concern
me."

"I don't understand it," said the linnet.

"I don't understand it either," said the wind. "But I _do_ it!"

Then he went down. And the friends stood and hung their heads and were
at their wits' end:

"There is nothing for it but to die," said the sheep's-scabious.

"If I have lived through the winter," said the hazel-bush, "I suppose I
can stand this. But it's very hard."

And the bell-flower and the sheep's-scabious, who had never lived
through the winter, wondered if it could really be worse than this. And
the linnet dreamt of the south, where _he_ spent the winter; and the
blades of grass had quite thrown up the game.

"Can't your branches reach up to the sun?" asked the sheep's-scabious of
the hazel-bush.

"Can't you fly up to the sun?" asked the bell-flower of the linnet.

But that they could not do; and the days passed and the wretchedness
increased. It was quite silent in the wood. Not a bird chirped, the fox
stayed in his hole, the stag lay in the shade and gasped, with his
tongue hanging out of his mouth, and the trees stood with drooping
branches, as though they were at a funeral.

Then the bell-flower rang all her bells, as if to ring in death over the
wood. It sounded quite still and weak and nevertheless rose high in the
air like a prayer:

"My blue bells chime for the rain to fall
In dusty and desolate places,
Where buds that should shine and be fragrant all
Are pining with pallid faces."

It is not easy to know who heard it; and none of the friends said a
word. But, at that moment, they all plainly heard some one speak and
then they all knew that it was the sun, whom the hazel-bush could not
reach with his branches