Not so Robin: he looked out of his bed into the moonlight, and turned away from it quickly with his face towards the wall. The brilliant beam seemed too pure for his eyes to-night, and he could only think of the words his mother had been just reading aloud from her Bible: "'The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!'" (Matt. vi. 22, 23).
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE BIRTHDAY QUEEN
IT was like a musical alarum, when Carolus, a bright golden canary, began to trill one morning early to Mistress Clarice. His companion, Chérie, who shared with him the pretty blue and white cage, thought the song was meant for her, and began to stretch her wings and plume herself as she listened. Blackbirds and thrushes called and chirruped from the garden below; but the canaries could not see them, as the nursery blind was not yet drawn up. Those merry singers on swinging boughs outside in the clear morning sunshine made Carolus very restless. He hopped from perch to perch, pecking up seeds faster and faster, and peering through the slender wires with his bead-like eyes, as if longing that the sleeper in the small white bed near the window would awake and talk to him.
But Clarice was still in dreamland, and so was Milly in the opposite cot; for it was only six o'clock, and even nurse, who was an early riser, had not yet begun to stir.
Poor Carolus grew desperate, for the sunlight came slanting in between the bars of the venetian blind in the most provokingly tempting manner. At last, he piped his loudest, shrillest notes, and actually succeeded in making Clarice open her eyes.
"Thank you, Carolus," she whispered, springing up lightly; "you are the first to wish me many happy returns of my birthday. Oh, it is a fine day! I so am glad. Is Milly awake, I wonder? Yes, the clothes are moving."
In another moment two little feet were standing on the cane chair by the window, and Carolus came to the bars of his cage to take some hemp seed from a pair of red lips. One peep through the blind, out into the garden lying in sunlight and cool shadow, a happy look towards the rosy-tipped clouds in the blue sky, and Clarice skipped across the floor to the other cot.
"Hush! Don't wake nurse and baby," said the elder child gravely, with upraised finger. "Come into my bed. I want to talk to you about so many things."
Milly rubbed her eyes as if she could not quite tell what was happening, then her arms were round her sister's neck in a loving clasp. "Do you know what I am going to give you for a birthday present?" was Milly's first question.