The Open Air 



and said in a very low tone, " Guido, dear, just this 

 minute I do not feel very happy, although the sun- 

 shine is so warm, because I have been thinking, for 

 we have been in one or other of these fields of your 

 papa's a thousand years this very year. Every year 

 we have been sown, and weeded, and reaped, and 

 garnered. Every year the sun has ripened us and 

 the rain made us grow; every year for a thousand 

 years." 



" What did you see all that time ? " said Guido. 



" The swallows came," said the Wheat, " and flew 

 over us, and sang a little sweet song, and then they 

 went up into the chimneys and built their nests." 



" At my house? " said Guido. 



" Oh, no, dear, the house I was then thinking of is 

 gone, like a leaf withered and lost. But we have not 

 forgotten any of the songs they sang us, nor have the 

 swallows that you see to-day one of them spoke 

 to you just now forgotten what we said to their 

 ancestors. Then the blackbirds came out in us and 

 ate the creeping creatures, so that they should not 

 hurt us, and went up into the oaks and whistled 

 such beautiful sweet low whistles. Not in those oaks, 

 dear, where the blackbirds whistle to-day; even the 

 very oaks have gone, though they were so strong that 

 one of them defied the lightning, and lived years and 

 years after it struck him. One of the very oldest of 

 the old oaks in the copse, dear, is his grandchild. If 

 you go into the copse you will find an oak which has 

 only one branch; he is so old, he has only that branch 

 left. He sprang up from an acorn dropped from an 

 oak that grew from an acorn dropped from the oak 

 the lightning struck. So that is three oak lives, 

 Guido dear, back to the time I was thinking of just 

 now. And that oak under whose shadow you are now 



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