It was a great disappointment to the other birds to be obliged to recognize so humble a little brown bird as their king, and they blamed the Owl for it. That is why he still sleeps in the daytime now, and looks about only at night. And that is why, also, he is such an enemy of the mice, continually hunting them in their holes.
But the little brown bird who sings alone in the hedges really made himself king of the birds. He has two names now, Hedge King, and Wren.
SUMMER
THE LITTLE RED PRINCESS
Every one knew that she was a princess because she wandered all day through the castle without doing any work. It was a very busy kingdom indeed even if it was so tiny. It was only about two inches high above the meadow, not nearly as tall as the grass blades that grew all around it. The grass looked like a forest of trees to the little red princess, and a wild forget-me-not that bent down over the castle made her sky, for it was almost as blue and nearly as large to her wee eyes.
There were many roads and streets that went up and down through the kingdom, none of them much wider than the stalk of a daisy. There were many little houses along the streets and there was the castle of the little red princess with more windows than one could count, and more winding passages than she could walk through.
The castle was full of other busy little people in red who waited on the princess. They milked her cows, and played with her, and managed the house-keeping so that she did not have to do a bit of work. She was the only one, though, in the whole kingdom who did not work.
As the little red princess looked from her highest window she saw her subjects hurrying to and fro. They were always bringing sand for building, whole lines of them, and putting up new houses, and making better roads. Sentinels watched the gates of the city, and hundreds of workers in red brought in food from the meadow.