"If you do," replied the Oak, "it is through no merit of your own. Chance placed you at that dizzy height, which is, to tell the truth, very much above your proper station. But to my mind it were better for you to be held fast by the honest old earth, as I am."
"Nonsense!" cried the young Willow, bowing to a crowd that had gathered on the other side of the street to look up in amazement at it. "You are envious, old fellow. I should be myself if I were you. Soon I shall reach the sky, while still your head will only touch my feet, and I shall be the friend and companion of the sun, moon, and stars. Never was tree so exalted as I!"
But ah! that very afternoon came a great hurricane. The window-shutters banged, and the window-panes smashed, the sparrows flew screaming to their nests, and the people in the streets were driven like flocks of sheep before the wind. And the young Willow, after battling fiercely a moment or two with the storm, was uprooted and flung down at the feet of the Oak.