the poplars are their cousins. They are the stateliest of all the
willow-trees and they know it, as any one can see by looking at them
with half an eye. You only have to notice the way in which they hold
themselves erect to perceive it.

The beech and the oak and the birch and whatever the other trees are
called stick out one polite branch on this side and one polite branch on
that.

"May I beg you kindly to give me a little bit of sunshine?" says the
branch up in the air.

"Can I help you to a little bit of shadow?" says the branch down by the
ground.

But the poplars sing a very different tune. With them it is:

"Every branch straight up on high! Close up to the trunk with you!
There's nothing to stare at down below! Look above you! Heads up!...
March!"

And all the branches strut right up to the sky and the whole tree shoots
up, straight and proud as a pikestaff.

It's tiring. But it's elegant. And it pays. For has any one ever seen a
smarter tree than one of those real, regular poplars, as stiff as a tin
soldier and as tall as a steeple?

And, when the poplars stand along the road, in a long row on either
side, you feel very respectful as you walk between them and are not in
the least surprised when it appears that the avenue leads right up to a
fine country-house.

The dwarf-willows and the poplars belong to the same family. The first
are the commonest on the common side, the second are the smartest on the
smart side. Between them are a number of other willow-trees. There are
some whose leaves are like silver underneath and some whose leaves
quiver so mournfully in the warm summer wind that the poets write verses
about them. There are some whose branches droop so sorrowfully towards
the ground that people plant them on their graves and some whose
branches are so tough and flexible that people use them to weave baskets
of. There are some out of which you can carve yourself a grand flute, if
you know how. And then there are a heap about which there is nothing
very remarkable to tell.

2

The willow-tree in this story was just one of the middling sort. But he
had a destiny; and that is how he came to find his way into print.

His destiny began with this, that one of the proud poplars who stood in
the avenue leading to the manor-house was blown down in a terrible
storm. He snapped right down at his roots; the stump was dug up; and it
left a very ugly gap in the middle of the long row of trees. As soon