The Open Air | Page 4

never say a word. Once, while they were all talking
pleasantly, Guido caught a fly in his hand, he felt his hand tickle as the
fly stepped on it, and he shut up his little fist so quickly he caught the
fly in the hollow between the palm and his fingers. The fly went buzz,
and rushed to get out, but Guido laughed, so the fly buzzed again, and
just told the grass, and the grass told the bushes, and everything knew
in a moment, and Guido never heard another word all that day. Yet
sometimes now they all knew something about him, they would go on
talking. You see, they all rather petted and spoiled him. Next, if Guido
did not hear them conversing, the fern said he must touch a little piece
of grass and put it against his cheek, or a leaf, and kiss it, and say,
"Leaf, leaf, tell them I am here."
Now, while he was lying down, and the tip of the rushes touched his
foot, he remembered this, so he moved the rush with his foot and said,
"Rush, rush, tell them I am here." Immediately there came a little wind,
and the wheat swung to and fro, the oak-leaves rustled, the rushes
bowed, and the shadows slipped forwards and back again. Then it was
still, and the nearest wheat-ear to Guido nodded his head, and said in a
very low tone, "Guido, dear, just this minute I do not feel very happy,

although the sunshine is so warm, because I have been thinking, for we
have been in one or other of these fields of your papa's a thousand years
this very year. Every year we have been sown, and weeded, and reaped,
and garnered. Every year the sun has ripened us and the rain made us
grow; every year for a thousand years."
"What did you see all that time?" said Guido.
"The swallows came," said the Wheat, "and flew over us, and sang a
little sweet song, and then they went up into the chimneys and built
their nests."
"At my house?" said Guido.
"Oh, no, dear, the house I was then thinking of is gone, like a leaf
withered and lost. But we have not forgotten any of the songs they sang
us, nor have the swallows that you see to-day--one of them spoke to
you just now--forgotten what we said to their ancestors. Then the
blackbirds came out in us and ate the creeping creatures, so that they
should not hurt us, and went up into the oaks and whistled such
beautiful sweet low whistles. Not in those oaks, dear, where the
blackbirds whistle to-day; even the very oaks have gone, though they
were so strong that one of them defied the lightning, and lived years
and years after it struck him. One of the very oldest of the old oaks in
the copse, dear, is his grandchild. If you go into the copse you will find
an oak which has only one branch; he is so old, he has only that branch
left. He sprang up from an acorn dropped from an oak that grew from
an acorn dropped from the oak the lightning struck. So that is three oak
lives, Guido dear, back to the time I was thinking of just now. And that
oak under whose shadow you are now lying is the fourth of them, and
he is quite young, though he is so big.
"A jay sowed the acorn from which he grew up; the jay was in the oak
with one branch, and some one frightened him, and as he flew he
dropped the acorn which he had in his bill just there, and now you are
lying in the shadow of the tree. So you see, it is a very long time ago,
when the blackbirds came and whistled up in those oaks I was thinking
of, and that was why I was not very happy."
"But you have heard the blackbirds whistling ever since?" said Guido;
"and there was such a big black one up in our cherry tree this morning,
and I shot my arrow at him and very nearly hit him. Besides, there is a
blackbird whistling now--you listen. There, he's somewhere in the

copse. Why can't you listen to him, and be happy now?"
"I will be happy, dear, as you are here, but still it is a long, long time,
and then I think, after I am dead, and there is more wheat in my place,
the blackbirds will go on whistling for another thousand years after me.
For of course I did not hear them all that time ago myself, dear, but the
wheat which was before me heard them and told me. They told me, too,