Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/108

76 darkest night; it seemed to him as if some enormous object had been thrown over him. It was a large cap which a boy from Nyboder had thrown over the bird; a hand was pushed in under the cap, and the clerk was seized round the back and wings so that he squeaked. In his first fright he cried aloud: "You impudent whelp! I am a clerk in the police office!" But to the boy it only sounded like "tweet, tweet!" He gave the bird a tap on its beak and walked off with it.

In the avenue he met a couple of school-boys of the better class, that is to say, as far as their station in life was concerned, but as regards intellect, they belonged to the lowest class in the school. They bought the bird for fourpence, and in this way the clerk was brought back to Copenhagen to a family which lived in Gothers Street.

"It is a good thing that I am dreaming," said the clerk, "otherwise I should become quite angry. First I was a poet, now I am a lark. Ah! it was that poetical spirit in me that transformed me into this little creature. It is a wretched state of affairs, especially when one falls into the hands of boys. I should like to know how all this is going to end."

The boy took him into a very elegant room; a stout smiling lady received them, but she was not at all pleased at the common field-bird, as she called the lark, being brought into the house; still she would allow it just for one day, but they would have to put the bird into the empty cage over by the window. "Perhaps it will please Polly," she said, smiling at a large green parrot which was swinging majestically on her ring in the pretty brass cage. "It's Polly's birthday," she said, in her foolish, naive way, "and the little field-bird has come to congratulate her."

Polly did not answer a single word, but went on swinging to and fro in her majestic way; but a pretty canary, which had been brought there last summer from his warm, balmy home, began to sing loudly.

"You squealing thing!" said the lady, and threw a white handkerchief over the cage.

"Tweet, tweet!" sighed the bird, "what a terrible snowstorm!" and settled down in silence with a sigh.

The clerk, or the field-bird, as the lady of the house called him, was put in a little cage close to the canary and not far from the parrot. The only sentence which Polly could scream out, and which often came in most comically, was: "Come, let us be human!" Everything else she screamed was as unintelligible as the twittering of the canary; but not to the clerk, who was now himself a bird; he understood his comrades very well.

"I used to fly under the green palms and the blossoming almond-tree!" sang the canary. "I used to fly with my brothers and sisters over the gorgeous flowers and over the crystal lake, where the plants waved to and fro. I also saw many beautiful parrots who told me the funniest stories, ever so long and ever so many."