"Now I can wait no longer," said the beech, and he burst into leaf.
Leaf after leaf crept forth from its green sheath and waved in the wind. The great tree made a green arch, like a mighty roof over the earth.
"Dear me, is it already evening?" asked the anemones, who noticed that it had grown quite dark.
"No; it is Death," said my Lady Spring. "Now your time is over. It happens to you just as it happens to all that is best on earth. Everything in turn must spring to life, and bloom, and die."
"Die?" cried some little anemones. "Must we die already?"
And some of the big ones grew quite red in the face in their terror and vexation.
"We know what it is," they said. "It is the beech that is the death of us. He steals the sunshine for his own leaves, and does not allow us a single ray. He is a mean, wicked thing."
They stood for some days, grumbling and crying. Then my Lady Spring came for the last time through the wood. She had still the oak trees and some other crusty old fellows to attend to.
"Lie down nicely in the earth and go to sleep," she said to the anemones. "It is of no use to kick against the pricks. Next year I will come back and waken you once more to life."