Once upon a time, the sun was bright and high in a deep blue sky. The breeze was soft, and the flowers and the trees reached up as high as they could stretch, just to drink in its warmth. Birds flitted about from bough to bough, and all the animals in the forest were busy doing what they liked best.
Pip the Panda was at home that day. His mother and father had gone out for a stroll, but Pip didn’t feel like going. He was spending the afternoon with Old Grandfather Bamboo, who told him stories that made Pip’s eyes as big as saucers.
“That was a time of too much rain for little bears like ourselves,” said Grandfather Bamboo, weaving together the rain stories and the stories of his youth in a way that made Pip feel quite warm inside. “Choose another. It strikes me that now is a good time to talk of the dreams that have come true. Sit still, and I will tell you my first ones.”
“I should like to have a look at my family tree,” said Pip, cutting across that dream with his own. “Do I grow on it, or do you think I was brought by the stork?”
“Well, since streets are paved with storks nowadays, and so few of them carry babies any more,” said Grandfather Bamboo, as he stroked his beard. “But people who don’t like us can do without tree or stork, too.”
“I wish I knew more stories so that I could tell you the same story over and over,” said Pip. “I’d love to hear my family tree story.”
“Perhaps I can help you. Questions are family trees,” began Grandfather Bamboo.
“I hope I shall grow a mile or so to-day, then,” said Pip.
“At least it is not necessary to go all the way to hear a story. Now, what tree would you like to see first?”
Pip thought for a moment.
“The one where the robins had their first nest,” said Pip, who tried to think of something interesting.
“There is no one here who can tell you much more about that,” said Grandfather Bamboo, “than what they found out with the stork’s help.”
“Oh!” sighed Pip.
“Or you might ask Lizzie,” continued Grandfather Bamboo.
“Who is Lizzie?”
“Well, she is our stork, you see.”
“I wish I could fly,” said Pip.
“To see what our ancestors could tell us,” continued Grandfather Bamboo, “it was first necessary for one of our great-great-great-grandmothers to be caught and brought to our house. Then they begged our grandmother, from whose life story the following things had been told by them, to tell a whole book of them where she could spit all to pieces. And grandmother becomes its publisher.”
“Whatever telling or printing does, it unites us like tree roots,” said Old Grandfather Bamboo as he dozed off.