The winter had come. Over all the fields lay the snow, and there was ice on the water. All the leaves lay dead and shrivelled on the ground; and there were no flowers, except here and there a poor frozen daisy, which stood gleaming white among the yellow grass.
And the flies and the gnats, and the butterflies and the cockchafers were dead. The snake lay torpid, and so did the lizard. The frog had gone into his winter quarters at the bottom of the pond, sitting deep in the mud, with only his nose sticking up into the air. And that was how he intended to sit the whole winter through.
The birds who had remained behind had not, after all, such a very bad time of it. The crows held great gatherings every evening in the wood, and screamed and chattered so loudly one could hear them ever so far away. The chaffinch and the tomtit hopped about cheerfully enough in the bushes, and picked up what they could find. The sparrow alone was always out of sorts. He sat on the ridge of the roof and hunched himself up, but the whole time he was thinking about the birds of passage.
"They are there by this time," he said to himself. "Here we have ice and snow; but down south, in the pleasant, warm countries, they have endless summer. Here I have a job to find even some dry bread; but there they have more than they can manage to eat. Ah, if one only had gone with them!"
"Come down and join us," called the chaffinch and the tomtit.
But the sparrow shook his head, and remained sitting on the ridge of the roof.
"I am consumed with longing, I can't endure it!" he screamed, and he took a long flight to cool his blood.