Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/346

314 any more now. It must be a hard fate to be born a little bird. Heaven be praised that none of my children have become that! Such a bird has nothing but his 'Tweet, tweet!' and must starve to death in the winter."

"Yes, you, who are a sensible person, may well say that," said the field-mouse. "What does a bird get in return for all his ' Tweet, tweet' when the winter comes? He has to starve and freeze, but perhaps that is considered grand, too!"

Thumbeline did not say anything, but when the other two turned away from the bird, she bent down, pushed aside the feathers which covered his head, and kissed his closed eyes. "Perhaps he is the bird who sang so prettily to me during the summer," she thought. "How much pleasure he gave me, the dear, pretty bird!"

The mole now stopped up the hole through which the sun shone, and accompanied the ladies home. But Thumbeline could not sleep that night, so she got up from her bed and plaited a large beautiful coverlet of hay, which she carried down into the passage and wrapped round the dead bird, and put some cotton-wool, which she had found in the field-mouse's room, on each side of the bird, so that it might keep him warm as he lay on the cold ground.

"Good-by, you pretty little bird!" she said; "good-by, and thanks for your beautiful song last summer, when all the trees were green and the sun shone so warmly upon us." She then put her head close to the bird's breast, but the next moment she was startled at hearing something beating inside the bird. It was his heart. The bird was not dead; he lay in a torpor, and now that he began to feel warm he soon revived. The swallows always fly away to the hot countries in the autumn, but if any of them are prevented from following the others, they will feel the cold so much that they fall to the ground as if they were dead, and the cold snow covers them up where they fall.

Thumbeline was so frightened that she trembled all over, for the bird was, of course, much bigger than she, who was only an inch long; but she took courage, put the cotton-wool still closer round the poor swallow, and brought a mint leaf that she had used as coverlet, and put it over the bird's head.

The next night she again stole down to the bird, and he was then alive, but so weak that he could open his eyes only a moment, when he saw Thumbeline, who stood there with a piece of decayed wood in her hand, for she had no other light.

"Many thanks, you pretty little child!" said the sick swallow; "I feel so beautifully warm. I shall soon get back my strength and be able to fly again out into the warm sunshine."

"Oh," she said, " it is so cold outside ! It is snowing and freezing. Stay in your warm bed and I will nurse you."

She then brought the swallow some water in the petal of a flower.