"
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.
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