Natural history -- Juvenile literature; Seasons -- Juvenile literature
The mistletoe is not so easy to find as the holly. I remember once after
we had piled the sledge with holly and dragged it home, the Elf pouted
her lips and looked very unhappy and said, "There isn't a mistletoe tree
anywhere in all the world, not even in the Long Wood. We shan't have any
mistletoe for Christmas." Things really did look rather sad, so I sent
her off to ask the old gardener about it, and the Imp went too. In about
an hour they came running back all smiles and happiness, and with their
arms as full as they could be. I shouted out to them as they went past
the window, "Where did you get all that mistletoe?" And they laughed
and said that it grew on the apple tree in the orchard, and that the old
gardener had cut it for them, and promised to let them bob for apples in
a bucket in the wood-shed if they were quick back. That is really and
truly the way the mistletoe grows. It is just like a baby that will not
leave its nurse. It pines away and will do nothing by itself, so it has
to be stuck into another tree to grow there more happily.
But you know the snow does not last all the Winter. After Christmas, and
before, there are weeks without any snow at all, and then we find it
rather sorrowful to walk over the bleak bare fields. But the hips and
haws are bright in the hedges, and whenever there is sunshine everything
is made jolly. And then, too, it is great fun to watch them ploughing
the land ready for next year's corn.
"Old Susan isn't pulling hay carts now," says the Elf, and we look up
and there is Susan side by side with another of the farm horses
harnessed to a plough. And a boy, a big strong boy, holds the handles of
the plough and the reins at the same time, and shouts to the horses, and
they cross the field slowly, tramp, tramp, tramp, and the rough earth is
turned over by the steel ploughshare, all dark and earthy, ready for the
seed. In the middle of one of the fields is a special friend of the
Imp's. He wears a battered hat and an old green coat, and a red worsted
scarf that flaps in the wind. He is made of two sticks, one stuck in the
earth and one nailed across it, and he is called Sir John Scarecrow,
because it is his duty to scare the birds from the field. But we have
laughed many a day to see the rooks perched on his broken hat and
tattered arms.
When we think of sowing seeds we think of Spring with the new corn green
on the red ground, and when we think of Spring we think of Summer, when
it is tall and wavy in the wind, and when we think of Summer we think of
Autumn when the corn is golden and cut, and then, why, then we come to
Winter again. And now the Imp and the Elf say that I have told you
enough about our Seasons, and that I must tell them fairy stories till
it is time for them to go to bed. So here is good-bye to you and a piece
of advice. If you have got any grown-ups near at hand and it is not
quite bedtime, if I were you I would ask them to tell you stories, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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