Spring had come round once more, and the Rye stood high already.
"We are pretty well off on the whole," said the Rye plants. "Here we stand in a great company, and not one of us but belongs to our own noble family. And we don't get in each other's way in the very least. It is a grand thing to be in the service of man."
But one fine day a crowd of little Poppies, and Thistles and Dandelions, and Burdocks and Harebells poked up their heads above ground, all amongst the flourishing Rye. "What does this mean?" asked the Rye. "Where in the world are you sprung from?"
And the Poppy looked at the Harebell and asked, "Where do you come from?"
And the Thistle looked at the Burdock and asked, "Where in the world have you come from?" They were all equally astonished, and it was an hour before they had explained. But the Rye was the angriest, and when she had heard all about Trusty and the Hare and the Breeze she grew quite wild.
"Thank heaven, the farmer shot the Hare last autumn," she said; "and Trusty, fortunately, is also dead, the old scamp. So I am at peace, as far as they are concerned. But how dare the Breeze promise to drop the seeds of the weeds in the farmer's cornfield?"
"Don't be in such a passion, you green Rye," said the Breeze, who had been lying behind the hedge and hearing everything. "I ask no one's permission, but do as I like; and now I'm going to make you bow to me." Then she passed over the young Rye, and the thin blades swayed backwards and forwards.
"You see," she said, "the farmer attends to his Rye, because that is his business. But the rain and the sun and I—we attend to all of you without respect of persons. To our eyes the poor weed is just as pretty as the rich corn."
The farmer now came out to look at his Rye, and when he saw the weeds in the cornfield he scratched his head with vexation and began to growl. "It's that scurvy wind that's done this," he said to Jack and Will, as they stood by his side with their hands in the pockets of their new trousers.
But the Breeze flew towards them and knocked all their caps off their heads, and rolled them far away to the road. The farmer and the two boys ran after them, but the Wind ran faster than they did.