But, if a cross and disagreeable
curmudgeon happened to sip, he was pretty certain to twist his visage
into a hard knot, and pronounce it a pitcher of sour milk!
Thus the old couple lived in their palace a great, great while, and grew
older and older, and very old indeed. At length, however, there came a
summer morning when Philemon and Baucis failed to make their appearance,
as on other mornings, with one hospitable smile overspreading both their
pleasant faces, to invite the guests of over night to breakfast. The
guests searched everywhere, from top to bottom of the spacious palace,
and all to no purpose. But, after a great deal of perplexity, they
espied, in front of the portal, two venerable trees, which nobody could
remember to have seen there the day before. Yet there they stood, with
their roots fastened deep into the soil, and a huge breadth of foliage
overshadowing the whole front of the edifice. One was an oak, and the
other a linden tree. Their boughs--it was strange and beautiful to
see--were intertwined together, and embraced one another, so that each
tree seemed to live in the other tree's bosom much more than in its own.
While the guests were marvelling how these trees, that must have
required at least a century to grow, could have come to be so tall and
venerable in a single night, a breeze sprang up, and set their
intermingled boughs astir.
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