[Illustration: 168]
HER grandmother’s garden was full of grass and flowers and trees, and
Fanchon thought it was the prettiest garden in all the world. By this
time she had pulled out her pocket-knife to cut her bread with, as they
do in the village. First she munched her apple, then she began upon her
bread. Presently a little bird came fluttering past her. Then a second
came, and a third. Soon ten, twenty, thirty were crowding round Fanchon.
There were grey birds, and red, there were yellow birds, and green, and
blue. And all were pretty and they all sang. At first Fanchon could not
think what they wanted. But she soon saw they were asking for bread and
that they were little beggars. Yes, they were beggars, but they were
singers as well. Fanchon was too kind-hearted to refuse bread to any one
who paid for it with songs.
She was a little country girl, and she did not know that once long ago,
in a country where white cliffs of marble are washed by the blue sea,
a blind old man earned his daily bread by singing the shepherds’ songs
which the learned still admire to-day. But her heart laughed to hear the
little birds, and she tossed them crumbs that never reached the ground,
for the birds always caught them in the air.
Fanchon saw that the birds were not all the same in character. Some
would stand in a ring round her feet waiting for the crumbs to fall
into their beaks. These were philosophers. Others again she could see
circling nimbly on the wing all about her. She even noticed one little
thief that darted in and pecked shamelessly at her own slice.
She broke the bread and threw crumbs to them all; but all could not get
some to eat. Fanchon found that the boldest and cleverest left nothing
for the others.
“That is not fair,” she told them; “each of you ought to take his proper
turn.”
But they never heeded; nobody ever does, when you talk of fairness and
justice. She tried every way to favour the weak and hearten the timid;
but she could make nothing of it, and do what she would, she fed the big
fat birds at the expense of the thin ones. This made her sorry; she was
such a simple child she did not know it is the way of the world.
Crumb by crumb, the bread all went down the little singers’ throats. And
Fanchon went back very happy to her grandmother’s house.