Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/188

 man and his donkey without any beating, out hobbled the old woman, and out flew the parrot.

And the cat had to spend a night and a day sewing up his sides.

—

LAMPBLACK

A poor black paint lay very unhappy in its tube. It had tumbled out of an artist's color-box and had lain unnoticed for a year. "I am only Lampblack," he said to himself. "The master never looks at me: he says I am heavy, dull, lusterless, useless. I wish I could cake and dry up and die, as poor Flakewhite did."

But Lampblack could not die; he could only lie in his tin tube and pine, like a silly, sorrowful thing as he was, in company with some broken bits of charcoal and a rusty palette-knife. The master never touched him; month after month passed by, and he was never thought of; the other paints had all their turn of fair fortune, and went out into the world to great halls and mighty palaces, transfigured and rejoicing in a thousand beautiful shapes and services. But Lampblack was always passed over as dull and coarse. Indeed he knew himself to be so, poor fellow, and this made it all the worse. "You are only a deposit!" said the other colors to him; and he felt that it was disgraceful to be a