Each bird laid his little scratchy toes on his little pointed nose and vowed that he would remember the King's commands and keep the King's secrets.
"Then," said the King, "make ready. Far to the north dwells a people that I love. For many a month they have lived amid ice and snow and the bitter frosts. Now they sigh for warmer days, and I have heard them. I am planning a delightful surprise for them. I am going to carry spring to them. Go, find the warm sunshine and the soft south wind and bid them come at once to the King's court, that I may take them and the spring days to my suffering and discouraged people. Then return with all speed to the King, and remember —do not betray my secret."
The bird-messengers hastened away as fast as ever their wings could carry them. They summoned the warm sunshine and the soft south wind and bade them make haste to the Earth King. They, of course, turned back as they were commanded, but before they reached home again, each one of them was seized with a strange, restless, uneasy feeling right in the middle of his feathers. It must have been the secret trying to get out. One by one they stole past the King's house under cover of the night and made their way to the north country. And when the morning came, there they were, sitting on the fence posts and in the apple trees, just bursting with the happy secret of the King.
Then the robin pipped, and the bluebird blew;
The sparrow chipped, and the swallow, too:
"We know something,—we won't tell,—
Somebody's coming,—you know well.
This is his name ('twixt you and me),
S-P-R-I-N-G."
The people were very happy when they heard what the birds said, and with much excitement began to get ready for the springtime.
Now, of course, the King knew nothing about all this, and was very happy in thinking of the surprise that he was to give the people. He took the warm sunshine and the soft south wind for companions, and made his way in all haste to the land of ice and snow. As he arrived, with his delightful secret, as he thought, hidden in his heart, he was amazed to find an old woman sitting in her doorway knitting.
"Why are you sitting here?" he asked. "Why are you not within, warming your feet by the fire?"
"Why, don't you know?" she said, "spring is coming!"
"Spring?" he asked, almost roughly; "how do you know?"
"Oh," said she with a smile, trying not to look at a robin that turned his back behind the picket fence, hoping that if the King saw him he might think he was an English sparrow, "a little bird told me."