THE OAK-TREE AND THE IVY


In the greenwood stood a mighty oak. So majestic was he that all who came
that way paused to admire his strength and beauty, and all the other trees
of the greenwood acknowledged him to be their monarch.

Now it came to pass that the ivy loved the oak-tree, and inclining her
graceful tendrils where he stood, she crept about his feet and twined
herself around his sturdy and knotted trunk. And the oak-tree pitied the
ivy.

"Oho!" he cried, laughing boisterously, but good-naturedly,--"oho! so you
love me, do you, little vine? Very well, then; play about my feet, and I
will keep the storms from you and will tell you pretty stories about the
clouds, the birds, and the stars."

The ivy marvelled greatly at the strange stories the oak-tree told; they
were stories the oak-tree heard from the wind that loitered about his
lofty head and whispered to the leaves of his topmost branches. Sometimes
the story was about the great ocean in the East, sometimes of the broad
prairies in the West, sometimes of the ice-king who lived in the North,
and sometimes of the flower-queen who dwelt in the South. Then, too, the
moon told a story to the oak-tree every night,--or at least every night
that she came to the greenwood, which was very often, for the greenwood is
a very charming spot, as we all know. And the oak-tree repeated to the ivy
every story the moon told and every song the stars sang.