The Story of a Dewdrop

by John R. Macduff

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

t was now morning. The mist still slept drowsily in the valley; in some places so dense, that the smoke of the early fires in the hamlet could scarcely pierce it. Already our friend the Thrush had completed both toilet and breakfast, and had issued forth on his round of daily work and pleasure; as active and busy as the thrush family always are. When he first rose from bed, he was not exactly in the very best of humours; for he had, what was always a cross to him when it occurred (though that was rarely), a disturbed night. Shall I tell you how his rest came thus to be invaded? Why, the Nightingale, on his way from the rose-leaf, had, perhaps somewhat inconsiderately, tapped at his door, to inform him that all he could get out of the Dewdrop was (a very incomprehensible sentiment to a sleepy bird), that he was a tear wept by the Sky when it lost the Sun; and he was bound in all sincerity to add, that it seemed rather a dull and uninteresting tear to boot.

"I know better," growled the Thrush. (I have used the word "growl," because I can find no better to describe the reality.) Growling, I am well aware, is a very uncommon demonstration of feeling in the case of a warbler. At all events, if it was not a growl, it was the nearest approach his beak could make to one, as he turned on the pillow which had been thus rudely disturbed. After, however, dozing for a few more hours, breakfast over, and his family seen to, off he sped with all his former cheerfulness and activity, till he found himself perched on a branch of the very tallest elm-tree he could pick out, and one, too, right above where the rose and the dewdrop were. Dear me! how he piped, and chirruped, and throstled! I thought the Nightingale had done wonders in that way; but it was nothing to the Thrush. He doubtless was under the impression that the Dewdrop was sound asleep, and needed no ordinary efforts in the way of rousing. I am sure if one could have dived under the yellow feathers, the little throat must have been purple.

After these musical preliminaries, our new friend (Songster No. 2) ventured by-and-by to come nearer. But, in doing so, he could hardly believe his eyes, specially after what the Nightingale had told him.

"A teardrop" indeed! There was not a bit of the tear about it. Where had been the Nightingale's eyes? It was something at all events very like a bright, unmistakable, beautiful diamond on which the Thrush looked. How it glistened and sparkled; and that too with all the prismatic colours! The spectator could only (what was an effort to any member of the Thrush family) gaze in mute wonder.

"What in all the world can you be, you lovely, silent sleeper on the rose-leaf, with your round crystal cheeks? Dewdrop we thought you were; teardrop you say you are: I cannot think you are either. If you are not a diamond set in rubies—stolen, for anything I know, from yesterday's rainbow—you look the thing uncommonly well."

"I am indeed a diamond," answered the Dewdrop. "Look at me," said the little gleaming dot, with the air of an aristocrat; "do you not say I am fit for a monarch's crown? And it is a monarch's crown I am presently to be set in. Every day I meet the Queen of the Morning.—Stay," it suddenly exclaimed, "I see her even now advancing with her rosy feet, 'sowing the earth with pearls.' See, for yourself, how the few stars which still linger in the sky, and which with their glittering torches lighted her out of the Eastern Gate, are paling every minute behind her! She says, of all the jewels in her tiara there is not one she is fonder of, or prouder of, than me. Away, away, little bird," stammered out the Dewdrop, with some nervous twitchings presently to be accounted for; "I must prepare to meet this Queen Aurora. But," it added in a kind of afterthought, "the procession will soon be over; come back shortly and see me, if you please." The keen diamond eye twinkled with a humorous, comical expression when these last words were uttered; as much as to say, "I shall manage to cheat you, old fellow, wont I?"

The Thrush had some small quantum of poetry in his nature; but he had a great deal of shrewd common sense too, and an immense idea of propriety. Accordingly, he at once took the hint as to departure; but with guileless simplicity cherished the resolution of renewing the intercourse, in an hour or two at latest, after the royal cavalcade had swept by.