silk along from the ashpoles, and the mist in the morning weighed down
their threads. It was so delicious to come out of the clods as we pushed
our green leaves up and felt the rain, and the wind, and the warm sun.
Then a little bird came in the copse and called, 'Sip-sip, sip, sip,
sip,' such a sweet low song, and the larks ran along the ground in
between us, and there were bluebells in the copse, and anemones; till
by-and-by the sun made us yellow, and the blue flowers that you have in
your hand came out. I cannot tell you how many there have been of these
flowers since the oak was struck by the lightning, in all the thousand
years there must have been altogether--I cannot tell you how many."

"Why didn't I pick them all?" said Guido.

"Do you know," said the Wheat, "we have thought so much more, and felt so
much more, since your people took us, and ploughed for us, and sowed us,
and reaped us. We are not like the same wheat we used to be before your
people touched us, when we grew wild, and there were huge great things in
the woods and marshes which I will not tell you about lest you should be
frightened. Since we have felt your hands, and you have touched us, we
have felt so much more. Perhaps that was why I was not very happy till
you came, for I was thinking quite as much about your people as about us,
and how all the flowers of all those thousand years, and all the songs,
and the sunny days were gone, and all the people were gone too, who had
heard the blackbirds whistle in the oak the lightning struck. And those
that are alive now--there will be cuckoos calling, and the eggs in the
thrushes' nests, and blackbirds whistling, and blue cornflowers, a
thousand years after every one of them is gone.

"So that is why it is so sweet this minute, and why I want you, and your
people, dear, to be happy now and to have all these things, and to agree