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“Ah!” said the proud grain. “I should like to be rich. It must be very fine to be rich. If I am ever made into cake, I mean to be so rich that no one will dare to eat me at all.”

“Ah?” said the learned grain. “I don’t think those boys would be afraid to eat you, however rich you were. They are not afraid of richness.”

“They’d be afraid of me before they had done with me,” said the proud grain. “I am not a common grain of wheat. Wait until I am made into cake. But gracious me! there doesn’t seem much prospect of it while we are shut up here. How dark and stuffy it is, and how we are crowded, and what a stupid lot the other grains are! I’m tired of it, I must say.”

“We are all in the same sack,” said the learned grain, very quietly.

It was a good many days after that, that something happened. Quite early in the morning, a man and a boy came into the granary, and moved the sack of wheat from its place, wakening all the grains from their last nap.

“What is the matter?” said the proud grain. “Who is daring to disturb us?”

“Hush!” whispered the learned grain, in the most solemn manner. “Something is going to happen. Something like this happened to somebody belonging to me long ago. I seem to remember it when I think very hard. I seem to remember something about one of my family being sown.”

“What is sown?” demanded the other grain.

“It is being thrown into the earth,” began the learned grain.

Oh, what a passion the proud grain got into! “Into the earth?” she shrieked out. “Into the common earth? The earth is nothing but dirt, and I am not a common grain of wheat. I won’t be sown! I will not be sown! How dare anyone sow me against my will! I would rather stay in the sack.”

But just as she was saying it, she was thrown out with the learned grain and some others into another dark place, and carried off by the farmer, in spite of her temper; for the farmer could not hear her voice at all, and wouldn’t have minded if he had, because he knew she was only a grain of wheat, and ought to be sown, so that some good might come of her.

Well, she was carried out to a large field in the pouch which the farmer wore at his belt. The field had been ploughed, and there was a sweet smell of fresh earth in the air; the sky was a deep, deep blue, but the air was cool and the few leaves on the trees were brown and dry, and looked as if they had been left over from last year. “Ah!” said the learned grain. “It was just such a day as this when my grandfather, or my father, or somebody else related to me, was sown. I think I remember that it was called Early Spring.”

“As for me,” said the proud grain, fiercely, “I should like to see the man who would dare to sow me!”

At that very moment, the farmer put his big, brown hand into the bag and threw her, as she thought, at least half a mile from them.

He had not thrown her so far as that, however, and she landed safely in the shadow of a clod of rich earth, which the sun had warmed through and through. She was quite out of breath and very dizzy at first, but in a few seconds she began to feel better and could not help looking around, in spite of her anger, to see if there was anyone near to talk to. But she saw no one, and so began to scold as usual.

“They not only sow me,” she called out, “but they throw me all by myself, where I can have no company at all. It is disgraceful.”