But one of them took courage and peeped out over the earth.
"Good-morning!" cried the withered beech leaves. "It is a little too early, little lady. I hope you will be none the worse for it."
"Isn't it my Lady Spring?" inquired the anemone.
"Not yet," answered the beech leaves. "It is only the green beech leaves that you were so angry with last summer. The green has gone from us, so we have no great finery to boast of now. We have enjoyed our youth and had our fling, I can tell you. And now we lie here and protect all the little flowers in the earth against the winter."
"And meanwhile I stand shivering in all my bare boughs," said the beech peevishly.
The anemones talked it over one to another down below in the earth, and thought it was grand.
"Those grand beech leaves!" they said.
"Mind you remember this next summer when I burst into leaf," said the beech.
"We will! we will!" whispered the anemones.