“Have you not had the whole winter to yourself,” asked the south wind, “freezing the brooks, driving away all my birds and my butterflies, and covering the fields and roads and bushes and barns with snow? If I chanced to come then and pay you a visit some bright morning, how quickly you drove me away again! Never might I stay till the sun went down!”
“The winter is my time,” said the north wind; “it belongs to me, and you had no right to come then.”
“And the spring is my time,” answered the south wind; “you know the law is that I must have the fields now.”
“You think a great deal of yourself,” said the north wind, angrily, “but I am stronger than you. I can fly farther, and I see things that you never see. Where do you think I came from this morning?”
“Tell me, I cannot guess?” answered the south wind.
“I came all the way from the icy pole, where the sea is frozen over, and the land is covered with snow that never melts. The white bear lives there. I saw one but a few hours ago, watching for fish by a hole that he had broken through the ice.”