"Am I?" asked the root and looked as important as ever he could.
"Of course you are," replied the seed. "You are all of you my parents. You procured food for me in the earth and the leaves cooked it in the sun. The branches lifted me into the air and light, but the flower rocked me in the bottom of her calyx and dreamed and, in her dream, whispered in the ears of the bumblebees, so that they might tell it to the other lilacs. You all gave me of your best; I owe my whole life to you."
This gave the root something to think about. It was almost midsummer before he solved the problem. But, when he had got it thoroughly into his stupid head, he asked the branches, in an unusually civil voice, whether there was not a fine little lilac-bush standing near them.
"Certainly there is!" replied the branches. "But you just attend to your business! It's blowing hard enough to topple us all over this very moment."
"Never you fear!" said the root. "I shall hold tight enough. I only wanted to tell you that that little lilac-bush is my child."
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the branches. "Do you think an old black root like you can get such a sweet little child as that? It's prettier and fresher and greener than you can imagine."
"It's my child for all that," said the root, proudly.
And then he told the branches what he had heard from the seed; and the branches repeated it to all the leaves.
"Well, there!" they all said; and then they understood that they were a big family, in which each had his own work to see to.