“I am the colour of gold,” it said, “and yet they have dared to cut me down.  What will they do next, I wonder?”

What they did next was to bunch it up with other wheat and tie it and stack it together, and then it was carried in a waggon and laid in the barn.

Then there was a great bustle after a while.  The farmer’s wife and daughters and her two servants began to work as hard as they could.

“The threshers are coming,” they said, “and we must make plenty of things for them to eat.”

So they made pies and cakes and bread until their cupboards were full; and surely enough the threshers did come with the threshing-machine, which was painted red, and went “Puff! puff! puff! rattle! rattle!” all the time.  And the proud wheat was threshed out by it, and found itself in grains again and very much out of breath.

“I look almost as I was at first,” it said; “only there are so many of me.  I am grander than ever now.  I was only one grain of wheat at first, and now I am at least fifty.”

When it was put into a sack, it managed to get all its grains together in one place, so that it might feel as grand as possible.  It was so proud that it felt grand, however much it was knocked about.

It did not lie in the sack very long this time before something else happened.  One morning it heard the farmer’s wife saying to the coloured boy: 

“Take this yere sack of wheat to the mill, Jerry.  I want to try it when I make that thar cake for the boarders.  Them two children from Washington city are powerful hands for cake.”

So Jerry lifted the sack up and threw it over his shoulder, and carried it out into the spring-waggon.

“Now we are going to travel,” said the proud wheat “Don’t let us be separated.”

At that minute, there were heard two young voices, shouting:—­

“Jerry, take us in the waggon!  Let us go to mill, Jerry.  We want to go to mill.”

And these were the very two boys who had played in the granary and made so much noise the summer before.  They had grown a little bigger, and their yellow hair was longer, but they looked just as they used to, with their strong little legs and big brown eyes, and their sailor hats set so far back on their heads that it was a wonder they stayed on.  And gracious! how they shouted and ran.

“What does yer mar say?” asked Jerry.

“Says we can go!” shouted both at once, as if Jerry had been deaf, which he wasn’t at all—­quite the contrary.

So Jerry, who was very good-natured, lifted them in, and cracked his whip, and the horses started off.  It was a long ride to the mill, but Lionel and Vivian were not too tired to shout again when they reached it.  They shouted at sight of the creek and the big wheel turning round and round slowly, with the water dashing and pouring and foaming over it.

“What turns the wheel?” asked Vivian.