“When my blossoms were fresh, white pyramids, came a swift flutter of wings about them one day, and a dazzlingly beautiful little bird thrust his long, delicate bill among the flowers; and while he held himself there in the air without touching his tiny feet to twig or stem, but only by the swift fanning of long, green-tinted wings, I offered him my best flowers for his breakfast, and bowed my great leaves as a welcome to him.  The dear little thing had been here before, while yet the sticky brown buds which wrap up my leaves had not burst open to the warm sunshine.  He and his mate, whose feather dress was not so fine as his, gathered the gum from the outside of the buds, and pulled the warm wool from the inside; and I could watch them as they flew away to the maple yonder, for then the trees that stand between us had no leaves to hide the maple, as they do now.

“Back and forth flew the birds from the topmost maple-branch to my opening buds; and day by day I saw a little nest growing, very small and round, lined warmly with wool from my buds, and thatched all over the outside with bits of lichen, gray and green, to match what grew on the maple-branches about it; and this thatch was glued on with the gum from my brown buds.  When it was finished, it was delicate enough for the cradle of a little princess, and the outside was so carefully matched to the tree by lichens, that the sharpest eyes from below could not detect it.  What a safe, snug home for the humming-birds!

“By the time the two tiny eggs were laid, I could no longer see the nest, for the thick foliage of other trees had built up a green wall between me and it.  But for many days the mother-bird staid away, and the father came alone to drink honey from my blossom-cups:  so I knew that the eggs were hatching under her warm folded wings, for I have seen such things before among my own branches in the robins’ nests and the bluebirds’.

“Now my flowers are all gone, and in their place the nuts are growing in their prickly balls.  I have nothing to tempt the humming-bird, and he never visits me:  only the yellow birds hop gayly from branch to branch, and the robins come sometimes.”  And the horse-chestnut sighed, for he missed the humming-bird; and he flapped his great leaves in the very face of the linden-blossoms, and forgot to say “Excuse me.”  But the linden is now, and for many days, full of sweetness, and will not answer ungraciously even so careless a touch.

Yes, the linden is full of sweetness, and sends out the fragrance from his blossoms in through the chamber windows, and down upon the people who pass in the street below.  And he tells all the time his story of how his pink-covered leaf-buds opened in the spring mornings, and unfolded the fresh green leaves, which were so tender and full of green juices that it was no wonder the mother-moth had thought the branches a good place whereon to lay her eggs; for as soon as they should be all laid, she would die, and there would be no one to provide food for her babies when they should creep out.