"Sky-high, sky-high, twitter-twitter, sky-high-higher-higher," sang the
lark, and he fluttered and circled round and round, making the air about
him echo again and again with the merry song he was singing--a song so
sweet, so bright and sparkling, that the birds of Greenlawn stopped to
listen to the little brown fellow with the long spurs and top-knot,
whistling away "sweet and clear, sweet and clear," till he rose so high
that the sounds came faintly, and nothing could be seen of him but a
little black speck high up against the edge of the white flecky cloud;
and still the sweet song came trilling down so soft and clear, that the
birds clapped their wings and cried "Bravo!" while the jackdaw said he
would take lessons from the lark in that style of singing, for he
thought it would suit his voice, and then he was quite offended when the
thrush laughed, but begged pardon for being so rude. And then, while
the birds were watching the lark, he began to descend; slowly, and by
jerks, every time sending forth spurts from the fountain of song that
gushed from his little warbling throat; and then down, lower and lower
still, singing till he was near the ground, when, with one long, clear,
prolonged note, he darted down, falling like a stone till close to the
grass, when he skimmed along for some distance, and then alighted in a
little tussock of grass that stood by itself in the field, which came
close up to Greenlawn, and ran right down to the farther edge of the
pond. And what was there in the tussock of grass but a tiny cup-like
nest in the ground, lined with dry grass, and covered snugly over by the
lark's little brown wife, who was keeping the little ones warm, while
her husband had been up almost out of sight in the bright sunny air
singing her one of his sweetest songs,--a song so sweet that the birds
had all stayed from their work to listen.
And this is what he sang--the song that made his little mate's black
beady eyes twinkle and shine as she sat in the tussock; for she felt so
proud to think how her mate could warble:--
"Low down, low down, sitting in the tussock brown,
Little mate, the sky is beaming; little mate, earth wears no frown.
Higher, higher; higher, higher; toward the cloudflecks nigher, nigher,
Round and round I circle, singing; higher, higher ever winging;
Over meadow, over streamlet,
Over glistening dew, and beamlet
Flashing from the pearl-hung grasses,
Where the sun in flashes passes;
Over where sweet matey's sitting;
Ever warbling, fluttering, flitting;
Praising, singing--singing, praising;
Higher still my song I'm raising.
Sky-high, sky-high; higher--higher--higher--higher,
Little matey, watch your flier;
Sweet--sweet--sweet--sweet--sweet--sweet--sweet--sweet;
Here the merry breezes meet,
Where I twitter, circling higher,
Watch me flying higher, higher.
Low down, low down, nestling in the tussock brown,
Little mate, I'm coming down."
"Well, that beats the owl hollow," said Mr Specklems to his wife. "I
think I could sing as well myself though, if it was not for this
constant feeling of having a cold. There must have been a draught where
I was hatched, and I've never recovered it. I can't think how he
manages to sing and fly too at the same time: I can't. Why, I should be
out of breath in no time."
"There, don't be a booby," said his wife; "you are not a song-bird at
all. I heard the crow say we were distant relations of his, and no one
would for a moment think that he was a singer."
"Hark at her now!" said Specklems, "not a singer; why, what does she
call that?" And then the vain little bird whistled and sputtered and
cizzled away till he was quite out of breath, when his wife laughed at
him so merrily, but told him that she liked his whistle better than the
finest trill the skylark ever made; and so then Specklems said that
after all he thought the crow might be right, but, at all events, the
Specklems could do something better than cry "Caw-waw" when they opened
their beaks.
Just then who should come buzzing along but a wasp, a regular gorgeous
fellow, all black and gold, and with such a thin waist that he looked
almost cut in two.
"Now then, old spiketail," said the starling, "keep your distance; none
of your stinging tricks here, or I'll cut that waist of yours in two
with one snip."
"Who wants to sting, old peck-path?" said the wasp. "It's very hard one
can't go about one's work without being always sneered and jeered and
fleered at by every body."
"Work," said the starling, "ho-ho-ho, work; why, you don't work; you're
always buzzing about, and idling; it's only bees that work and make
honey."
"There now," said the wasp, "that's the way you people go on: you hear
somebody say that the bees are industrious and we are idle, and then you
believe it, and tell everybody else so, but you never take the trouble
to see if it's true; and so we poor wasps have to go through the world
with a bad name, and people say we sting. Well, so we do if we are
touched; and so do bees too, just as bad as we do, only the little
gluttons make a lot of sweet honey and wax, and so they get all the
praise."
And then away went the little black-and-yellow fellow with his beautiful
gauzy wings shining in the sun, and he flew over the garden wall, and
was soon scooping away at a ripe golden-yellow plum that was hanging
from the wall just ready to pick; and then off he flew again to his
nest, where dozens more wasps were going in and out of the hole in a
fallen willow-tree, all soft like touchwood, and in it the wasps had
scooped out such a hole, where they had been working away quite as hard
and industriously as the bees their cousins; and here they had made
comb, and cells, and stored up food, and instead of their cells being
made of wax, they were composed of beautiful paper that these busy
little insects had made. There were grubs, too, and eggs that would
turn to grubs, and afterwards to wasps; and here the wasps worked away,
in and out all day, as busy as could be. But they had a very hard life
of it, for everyone was trying to kill the poor things, and set traps
for them to tumble into and be smothered in sweet stuff. But though
people did not think so, the wasps did a great deal of good, and among
other things they killed a great many tiresome little flies that were
always buzzing and humming about; and the wasps went after them and
caught them by the back, and then snipped off their wings and head, and
flew off and ate the best parts of them up.