But Gerda and Kay went home hand in hand. There they found the grandmother and everything just as it had been, but when they went through the doorway they found they were grown-up.
There were the roses on the leads; it was summer, warm, glorious summer.
The Fir-tree
Translated from the German of Hans Christian Andersen.
There was once a pretty little fir-tree in a wood. It was in a capital position, for it could get sun, and there was enough air, and all around grew many tall companions, both pines and firs. It did not heed the warm sun and the fresh air, or notice the little peasant children who ran about chattering when they came out to gather wild strawberries and raspberries. Often they found a whole basketful and strung strawberries on a straw; they would sit down by the little fir-tree and say, ‘What a pretty little one this is!’ The tree did not like that at all.
By the next year it had grown a whole ring taller, and the year after that another ring more, for you can always tell a fir-tree’s age from its rings.
‘Oh! if I were only a great tree like the others!’ sighed the little fir-tree, ‘then I could stretch out my branches far and wide and look out into the great world! The birds would build their nests in my branches, and when the wind blew I would bow to it politely just like the others!’ It took no pleasure in the sunshine, nor in the birds, nor in the rose-coloured clouds that sailed over it at dawn and at sunset. Then the winter came, and the snow lay white and sparkling all around, and a hare would come and spring right over the little fir-tree, which annoyed it very much. But when two more winters had passed the fir-tree was so tall that the hare had to run round it. ‘Ah! to grow and grow, and become great and old! that is the only pleasure in life,’ thought the tree. In the autumn the woodcutters used to come and hew some of the tallest trees; this happened every year, and the young fir-tree would shiver as the magnificent trees fell crashing and crackling to the ground, their branches hewn off, and the great trunks left bare, so that they were almost unrecognisable. But then they were laid on waggons and dragged out of the wood by horses. ‘Where are they going? What will happen to them?’
In spring, when the swallows and storks came, the fir-tree asked them, ‘Do you know where they were taken? Have you met them?’
The swallows knew nothing of them, but the stork nodded his head thoughtfully, saying, ‘I think I know. I met many new ships as I flew from Egypt; there were splendid masts on the ships. I’ll wager those were they! They had the scent of fir-trees. Ah! those are grand, grand!’