FIDDLER. Tell her, Johannes.
TALKER. If you will allow me, Madame. But tell me first, did you notice anything lacking in our performance?
MOTHER (surprised). No; I don't think so.
TALKER (to DAUGHTER). Perhaps you, Mademoiselle?
DAUGHTER (shyly). It seemed to lack a woman's voice, sir.
TALKER (admiringly). What intelligence! What profundity! (To MOTHER) Madam, I felicitate you again on your daughter. Unerringly she has laid her finger on the weak joint in our armour. We have no woman's voice.
MOTHER. Well, Sir, I don't see how I can help you.
TALKER. Madame, you have a nightingale. It has lived in a cage all its life. It looks through the bars sometimes, and sees the great world outside, and sighs and turns back to its business of singing. Madame, it would sing better outside in the open air, with the other birds.
MOTHER. I don't understand you, sir. Are you referring to my daughter?
TALKER (looking towards the window). There is a stream which runs beyond the road, with a green bank to it. We were seated on that bank, I and my two companions, eating our bread and cheese, and washing it down with draughts from that good stream. We were tired, for we had come from over the hills that morning, and it was good to lie on our backs there and watch the little clouds taking shape after shape in the blue, and so to dream our dreams. In a little while the road would take us westward, here through a wood banked with primroses, there across a common or between high spring hedges with the little stream babbling ever at the side of us. And in the evening we would come to an inn, where there would be good company, and we would sing and play to them, and they would reward us. (With a shrug) It is a pleasant life.