“Ha! ha!” said a neighbour, “now you’re done for.”
But the tree laughed slyly. “I know a trick worth two of that,” he said, and he induced a squirrel to rub off the mark with its tail, so that when the wood-cutters came it was not felled after all.
“Oh,” said the swallows when they came back next year, “you here still?”
“Surely,” said the tree conceitedly. “They tried to get me, but I was too clever for them.”
“But don’t you want to be a mast,” they said, “and hold up the sails of a beautiful ship, and swim grandly all about the seas of the world, and lie in strange harbours, and hear strange voices?”
“No,” said the tree, “I don’t. I dislike the sea. It is monotonous. I want to assist in influencing the world. I want to be important.”
“Don’t be so silly,” said the swallows.
And then the tree had his wish, for one day some more wood-cutters came; but, instead of picking out the tallest and straightest trees, as they had been used to, they cut down hundreds just as they came to them.
“Look out,” said the swallows. “You’ll be cut down now whether you want it or not.”
“I want it,” said the tree. “I want to begin to influence the world.”