Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/234

202 It thought of Christmas Eve and Lumpy-Dumpy, the only story it had heard and knew how to tell—and so the tree was burned to ashes.

The boys were playing in the yard, and the youngest was wearing the tinsel star on his breast, which the tree had worn on the happiest evening of its existence. Now all that had come to an end, and so had the tree; and the story as well came to an end, to an end—and so do all stories!