from very weariness, who knows what the sad consequences might not have
been?

"How warm it is!" murmured the dandelions in the meadow. "Our heads
are quite heavy, and our feet are hot. If it was not our duty to stand
up, we would like nothing better than to sink down in the shade and go
to sleep; but we must attend to our task and keep awake."

"What can you have, you wee things, to keep you busy?" asked the tall
milkweed that grew near the fence-rails; and the mullein-stalk beside
it echoed,--

"What, indeed?"

"Now, one can understand one so tall as I having to stand upright and
do my duty; but you,--why, you are no taller than one of my green pods
that I am filling with floss--"

"And not half so tall as one of my leaves that I must line with
velvet," interrupted the mullein-stalk again.

The dandelions looked grieved for a moment, but answered brightly:
"Why, don't you know? It must be because you live so far away--there
by the fence--that you don't know we are here to pin the grass down
until it grows old enough to know it must not wander off like the
crickets, or to blow away like the floss in your own pods. Young grass
is very foolish,--I think I heard the farmer call it green the other
day, but we don't like the expression ourselves,--and it would be apt
to do flighty things if we did n't pin it down where it belongs. When
we have taught it its lesson, we can go to sleep. We always stay until