"There are none little enough," they
said.
Oh! how the Little Fir Tree pricked
up his needles!
"Here is one," said one of the men,
"it is just little enough." And he touched
the Little Fir Tree.
The Little Fir Tree was happy as a bird,
because he knew they were about to cut
him down. And when he was being carried
away on the sledge he lay wondering,
SO contentedly, whether he should be the
mast of a ship or part of a fine city house.
But when they came to the town he was
taken out and set upright in a tub and
placed on the edge of a sidewalk in a row
of other fir trees, all small, but none so little
as he. And then the Little Fir Tree began
to see life.
People kept coming to look at the trees
and to take them away. But always when
they saw the Little Fir Tree they shook
their heads and said,--
"It is too little, too little."
Until, finally, two children came along,
hand in hand, looking carefully at all the
small trees. When they saw the Little Fir
Tree they cried out,--
"We'll take this one; it is just little
enough!"
They took him out of his tub and carried
him away, between them. And the
happy Little Fir Tree spent all his time
wondering what it could be that he was just
little enough for; he knew it could hardly
be a mast or a house, since he was going
away with children.
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