Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/53

 empty swallow’s nest of the year before, and occupied it now as if it were their own.

“Are those ducks’ children that are swimming about?” asked the young sparrows, as they spied the feathers on the water.

“If you must ask questions, pray ask sensible ones,” said the mother. “Can you not see that these are feathers, the living stuff for clothes, which I wear and which you will wear soon; but ours is much finer. I should like, however, to have them up here in the nest, they would make it so warm. I am rather curious to know why the ducks were so alarmed just now, it could not be from fear of us, certainly, though I did say ‘tweet’ rather loudly. The thick-headed roses really ought to know, but they are very ignorant, they only look at one another and smell, I am heartily tired of such neighbours.”

“Listen to the sweet little birds above us,” said the roses; “they are trying to sing; they cannot manage it yet, but it will be done in time; what a pleasure it will be, and how nice to have such lively neighbours.”

Suddenly two horses came prancing along to drink at the water; a peasant boy rode on one of them; he had a broad-brimmed black hat on, but had taken off most of his other clothes that he might ride into the deepest part of the pond; he whistled like a bird, and while passing the rose-bush he plucked a rose and placed it in his hat, and then rode on, thinking himself very fine. The other roses looked at their sister, and asked each other where she could be going, but they did not know.

“I should like for once to go out into the world,” said one, “although it is very lovely here in our home of green leaves. The sun shines warmly by day, and in the night we can see that heaven is more beautiful still, as it sparkles through the holes in the sky.”

She meant the stars, for she knew no better.

“We make the house very lively,” said the mother sparrow, “and people say that a swallow’s nest brings luck, therefore they are pleased to see us; but as to our neighbours, a rose-bush on the wall produces damp. It will most likely be removed, and perhaps corn will grow here instead of it. Roses are good for nothing but to be looked at, and smelt, or, perhaps, one may chance to be stuck in a hat. I have heard from my mother that they fall off every year. The farmer’s wife preserves them by laying them in salt, and then they receive a French name, which I neither can nor will pronounce; then they are sprinkled on the fire to produce a pleasant smell. Such you see is their life. They are only formed to please the eye and the nose. Now you know all about them.”

As evening approached, the gnats played about in the warm air beneath the rosy clouds, and the nightingale came and sang to the roses, that the beautiful was like sunshine to the world, and that the beautiful lives for ever. The roses thought that the nightingale was singing of herself, which any one, indeed, could easily suppose; they never imagined that her song could refer to them. But it was a joy to them, and they wondered to themselves whether all the little sparrows in the nest would become nightingales.