“I must thread my needle before I begin my work,” said a little girl as she sat under a big pine tree, with another little girl.
“What’s that I hear?” asked one of the pine needles. “She speaks about threading her needle? Am I her needle, or are you her needle, or who in the world is her needle? And what is thread?”
The poor needles were very nervous. And the other little girl spoke next: “I like to knit better than I do to sew because then I can use four needles.”
“Oh, dear, oh dear,” said the pine needles. “There’s a child who needs four needles. Do you suppose she threads us too?”
They watched for a long time, trying to move away from the children so they would not be used. They whispered to the pine tree saying:
And the pine tree whispered to the breeze:
So the wind blew the pine tree and the pine tree’s branches swayed and blew about the little pine needles. But no sooner had all this happened than they saw that the children had other things called needles. They hadn’t wanted pine needles at all!