And kind mother Nature smiled, and presented her daughter Maple with such multitudes of leaves!—more than you could count. These gave beauty to the tree, besides keeping the rain out of the birds’ nests; for birds had quickly come to build there, and there was reason to expect a lively summer. A right happy Maple-Tree now was she, and well pleased with her pretty green leaves. They were beautiful in the sunlight; and the winds whispered to them things so sweet as to make them dance for joy. A pair of golden-robins had a home there, and thrushes came often. Sunshine and song all day long! Or, if the little leaves became hot and thirsty in the summer’s heat, good mother Nature gave them cooling rain-drops to drink. A happier Maple-Tree could nowhere be found.
“Thanks, thanks, mother Nature,” she said, “for all your care and your loving-kindness to me.”
But, when autumn came with its gloomy skies and its chilling winds, the Maple-Tree grew sad: for she heard her little leaves saying to each other, “We are going to die; we are going to die!”
People living near said, “Hark! Do you hear the wind? It sounds like fall.” Nobody told them it was the leaves all over the forest, moaning to each other, “We are going to die; we are going to die!”
“My dear little leaves!” sighed the Maple-Tree. “Poor things, they must go! Ah, how sad to see them droop and fade away!”
“I will make their death beautiful,” said kind mother Nature; and she changed their color to a scarlet, which glowed in the sunlight like fire.
And everyone said, “How beautiful!” But the poor Maple-Tree sighed, knowing it was the beauty of death.
And one cold October morning she stood with her limbs all bare, looking desolate. The bright leaves lay heaped about her.
“Dear, pretty things,” she said, “how I shall miss them! they were such a comfort! And, how ugly I am! Nobody will enjoy looking at the Maple-Tree now.”
But presently a flock of school-girls came along, chatting away, all so cheerily, of ferns, red berries, and autumn-leaves.