There are people who shrink from notice because they are so badly off. It is simply stupid to be ashamed of being poor; and the little dwarf-willows are not a bit ashamed. But they know that the soil they grow in is so poor that they can never attain the height of proper trees. If they tried to shoot up and began to carry their heads like their stately cousins the poplars, they would soon learn the difference.
For the poplars are their cousins. They are the stateliest of all the willow-trees and they know it, as any one can see by looking at them with half an eye. You only have to notice the way in which they hold themselves erect to perceive it.
The beech and the oak and the birch and whatever the other trees are called stick out one polite branch on this side and one polite branch on that.
"May I beg you kindly to give me a little bit of sunshine?" says the branch up in the air.
"Can I help you to a little bit of shadow?" says the branch down by the ground.
But the poplars sing a very different tune. With them it is:
"Every branch straight up on high! Close up to the trunk with you! There's nothing to stare at down below! Look above you! Heads up!... March!"
And all the branches strut right up to the sky and the whole tree shoots up, straight and proud as a pikestaff.
It's tiring. But it's elegant. And it pays. For has any one ever seen a smarter tree than one of those real, regular poplars, as stiff as a tin soldier and as tall as a steeple?
And, when the poplars stand along the road, in a long row on either side, you feel very respectful as you walk between them and are not in the least surprised when it appears that the avenue leads right up to a fine country-house.