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Updated: June 21, 2025
This venerable person was toddling to his home in the gloaming with a barrow load of Miss Betty's new potatoes, dexterously hidden by an upper sprinkling of groundsel and hemlock, when the Lubber-fiend sprang out from behind an elder-bush, ran at the old man with his black head, and knocked him, heels uppermost, into the ditch.
The wild rose-bush comforted the dandelion and said nice things about the willow-tree; the elder-bush said it would be all right; the oak grumbled and asked whether, after all, one could expect much from a tree without a crown. "Now listen," said the willow-tree, who had paid no attention to the others. "I'll tell you something, my dear Dandelion, which I don't generally care to talk about.
Pelle pushed his head forward through the tall elder-bush, and suddenly she put her two hands about his head and kissed him violently and pushed him back. He tried gropingly to take hold of her, but she stood there laughing at him. Her face glowed in the darkness. "You haven't heard anything about it!" she whispered. "Come, I'll tell you!" Now he was smiling all over his face.
Their place had been filled by a tangle of many saplings, and in their midst rose an elder-bush, already showing leaf, amid the bare winterly wood. The last western light caught the twinkling leaf buds, and made of the tree a Burning Bush, first herald of the spring.
Look at them and look at me and you can judge for yourself that such a monster as I must be a blot upon a stately avenue of poplars." "He has some sense of shame left in him," said the nearest poplar. And all the other trees of the avenue whispered their assent. "You think about it too much," said the elder-bush. "The more one broods upon a thing, the worse it becomes.
He pushed his way eagerly into the elder-bush. But at the same moment he felt her clenched fist strike his face. She laughed crazily, but he stood fixed in the same position, as though stunned, his mouth held forward as if still awaiting a kiss. "Why do you hit me?" he asked, gazing at her brokenly. "Because I can't endure you! You're a perfect oaf, and so ugly and so common!"
I thought, a little time ago, that my branches up there would turn into a new crown, but that was sheer folly. They grow and strut and turn green and that is all they do. And then, besides, I feel that I am beginning to decay. "What's that you say?" asked the wild rose-bush. "Are you decaying?" asked the oak. "Yes ... that's by far the worst thing of all," said the elder-bush.
There was that season a solitary elder-bush higher up on the down among the furze which bore a heavy crop of berries; and when the fruit was ripe he watched the birds feeding on it, the wheatears among them.
But he draws the leaves down into the earth and eats them and turns them into mould. So I say, like the elder-bush, it will be all right." "So you're becoming hollow?" asked the oak. "I am," said the willow-tree. "It can't be helped. It's not quite the sort of thing to talk about, but it's different now, because the dandelion was so anxious.
Only listen to what a poor, but honest elder-bush tells you. Things always end by settling themselves in one way or another." "Yes, you've experienced a bit of life," said the oak. "Goodness knows I have!" said the elder. "They have cut me and cropped me and chopped me and slashed at me in every direction. But, every time they curtailed me on one side, I shot out on the other.
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