3
But the next morning the animals had fresh food for thought.
They saw Two-Legs carry the corpse into the forest and build a great heap of stones over it. His wife picked the reddest flowers and laid them on the stones.
“Well, I never!” said the nightingale. “When another dies, he’s left, if you please, to lie where he falls. But as much fuss is made about this child as if his memory were to last for all eternity! I don’t even know what has become of my live children of last year, not to speak of the poor little chap who fell out of the nest and broke his neck.”
“You just wait. There’s worse to come,” said the ox.
And it came. For, a week later, something happened that enraged the animals of the forest more than all that had gone before. Mrs. Two-Legs saw a splendid bird of paradise sitting in a tree:
“What wonderful feathers!” she said. “If I could only have a tuft like that to wear in my hair!”
Two-Legs, who wanted to do everything to console her for the death of the child, at once went out with his spear and soon came back with the dead bird of paradise. She pulled out his feathers and tucked them in her hair and thought she looked charming; and Two-Legs thought so too.
“Now this is really too bad,” said the nightingale. “To kill a bird in order to adorn his wife with the feathers! Did you ever in your born days! It’s well for me that I’m so grey and ugly!”
The widow of the bird of paradise, followed by a great host, went off to the lion: