For a time the Little Emperor was delighted with his new pet, and every day he carried it in its cage when he went for a walk. But it never sang, only beat against the bars of its cage, or huddled on its perch, so presently he grew tired of it, and it was hung up in its cage in a dark corner of one of the Palace rooms, where he soon forgot all about it.
How could the little bird sing? It was sick for the wide blue roads of the air, for wet green rice fields where the coolies stand with bare legs, sky-blue shirts, and bamboo hats as big as umbrellas, for the yellow rivers, and the mountains bright with red lilies. How could it sing in a cage? But sometimes it tried to cry to them: “Let me out! Please, please let me out! I have never done anything to harm you! I am so unhappy I think my heart is breaking! Please let me go free!”
“What a sweet song!” everybody would say. “Run and tell the Little Emperor that his bird is singing again.”
After a while the little bird realized that they did not understand, and it tried no longer, but drooped, dull-eyed and silent, in its cage.
One night the Little Emperor had a dream. Perhaps you won’t wonder when I tell you what he had for supper.
First he had tea in a bowl of jade as round and white as the moon, heaped up with honeysuckle flowers.
Then, in yellow lacquer boxes, sugared seeds, sunflower and lotus flower and watermelon seeds, boiled walnuts, and lotus buds.
Then velvety golden peaches and purple plums with a bloom of silver on them.
Pork cooked in eleven different ways: chopped, cold, with red beans and with white beans, with bamboo shoots, with onions, and with cherries, with eggs, with mushrooms, with cabbage, and with turnips.
Ducks and chickens stuffed with pine needles and roasted.