“Not so, not so,” murmured the brooklet, soft and low, and its words all flowed in tune and rhyme. “I’ve sung your praises many a time. And bird and bee oft tell to me, as through the meadow and field I pass, how much they love the beautiful grass. So don’t get blue, whatever you do, for green’s the color, dear grass, for you. And, believe me, everywhere you grow, a joy you bring, I know ’tis so. And now, I pray, bend over this way, and take the kiss I have for you.”
The grass bent gracefully toward the brook, and took not one, but three kisses, and then the chattering little thing went dancing on its way.
Early that evening, as the setting sun was sinking slowly in the west, a strong, sunburnt young fellow, with a merry twinkle in his bright brown eyes, came into the meadow, and began cutting some sods,—whistling as he worked,—and packing them away in a wheelbarrow he had brought with him.
The grass that had talked with the dandelions, and been kissed by the brook in the morning, was the last to be cut, and so was placed upon the top of the load.
“O, what can this mean?” asked its many tiny blades, this time in a chorus of sorrow. “Why are we taken from our home? Alas! we never knew how much we loved our beautiful meadow until now, when we are leaving it forever. Where can we be going?”
But just then the man took up the handles of the wheelbarrow, and the grass only had time to wave a last farewell as he trundled it away.
“Farewell,” called the dandelions; “farewell,” murmured the brook; and “farewell,” sighed the grass that was left behind.
The young man wheeled the barrow into the front yard of a newly-built little cottage on the other side of the road.
There was here no sign of anything green, but the brown earth had been dug and nicely raked, and the grass heard it saying softly to itself in joyful tones, “O, now I shall be dressed at last—here comes the beautiful, friendly grass to cover me.”
Then the grass thought of what the dandelions had said.