"We shall have no rain to-morrow either," said the ranger. "My small trees are dying."
"And my corn is being blighted," said the farmer.
Next morning, the friends became seriously alarmed when they looked at one another.
They were hardly recognizable, so ill did they appear, with yellow, hanging leaves and faded flowers and dry roots. Only the moss looked as usual.
"Don't you feel anything?" asked the hazel-bush.
"Yes, I do," said the moss. "But it doesn't show in me. I might lie here and be dead for a whole month and all the time look as if I were alive and well. I can't help it."
"I shall go up and look for a cloud," said the linnet.
And he went up in the air, so high that he was quite lost to the others, and he came back and said that there was a cloud far away in the west.
"Ask him to come," said the bell-flower, in a faint voice.
And the linnet flew up again and came back presently with the sad answer that the cloud could not: