“‘This is a very quiet way of life—ours,’ said the fir trees nodding to each other.
“‘I’m very tired of it,’ said one of the cones. ‘It’s very cold up here, and really in the dark one cannot see to do much.’
“‘A fir glories in the frost and the cold and the snow,’ said the tall tree proudly. ‘We are not called upon to do anything but to make sweet music to the wind, and to keep it from blowing too fiercely upon the little hut, and to shew our fine heads against the sky. The snow-birds are warm in our arms during the long night, for we have plenty of good clothes all the year round.’
“The beeches heard this speech, but were too frost-bound to make any answer.”
“What became of the discontented pine cone?” said Carl. “Did he throw himself into the fiord?”
“Yes,” said the cone,—“at least one night he tried to. But he fell on the shore instead—just dropped down at the foot of the fir tree; and there Kline found him one day, and picked him up and carried him into the house to show Flocken—he was such a large one.
“Every night through the winter was that light burning in the same room of the hut; and every day did Kline come out with his gun and spend what daylight there was in hunting. Sometimes he brought home a hare or a ptarmigan, or a partridge that he had snared, or a wild duck; while his father was cutting wood, or away in his boat to catch fish.
“‘I could get only one partridge to-day, dear Flocken,’ Kline would say upon his return home; ‘but maybe I shall find something better to-morrow.’
“‘O Kline,’ said his little sister, ‘how good you are to take so much trouble for me! But it’s a pity to kill the birds,—they can’t make me live, so we might let them.’
“‘Wasn’t that a good one you had yesterday?’ said Kline.