“No, no,” said the first. “I tell you it is my turn to begin, brother. I have my story quite ready, just as I heard it down there in the sunny lands from one of my companions, and I must tell it at once before I forget it.”
“Mine is ready too,” replied the other bird. “At least almost. I have just to—think over a few little points, and I am just as anxious as you to amuse the dear children. However, it would be setting them a bad example if we began to quarrel about it, so I will give in. I will fly to a higher branch to meditate a little undisturbed, while you can hop lower still and attract their attention.”
Alix and Rafe looked at each other with a smile as the little fellow fluttered downwards and alighted on a branch still nearer them. There he flapped his wings and cleared his throat.
“Cheep, cheep,” he began. At least that is what it would have sounded to any one else, but the children knew it meant “good-afternoon.”
“Thank you,” they said. That was not exactly a reply to “good-afternoon,” certainly; but they meant to thank him for his kind intentions.
“Oh, so you know all about it, I see,” said the bird. “If you do not mind, I should prefer your making no further observations. It interrupts the thread of my narration.”
The children were perfectly silent. One has to be very careful, you see, when a bird is telling a story; you can’t catch hold of him and push him back into the arm-chair, as if he was a big person to be coaxed into entertaining you.
“The title of my story,” began the bird, “is ‘The Summer Princess,’” and again he cleared his throat.
Once upon a time, in a country far to the north of the world, lived a King and a Queen, who had everything they could wish for except an heir to their throne. When I say they had everything they could wish for, that does not mean they had no troubles at all. The Queen thought she had a good many; and the King had one which was more real than any of her fancied ones. He had a wife who was a terrible grumbler. She was a grumbler by nature, and besides this she had been a spoilt child.
As she was very beautiful and could be very sweet and charming when in a contented mood, the King had fallen deeply in love with her when he was on his travels round the world, and had persuaded her to leave her own home in the sunny south to accompany him to his northern kingdom. There she had much to make her happy. Her husband was devoted to her, and while the first bright summer lasted, she almost forgot to grumble, but when the winter came, fierce and boisterous as it always is in those lands, she grew very miserable. She shivered with the cold and instead of bracing herself to bear it, she wrapped herself in her furs and sat from morning till night cowering over a huge fire. In vain the King endeavoured to persuade her to go out with him in his beautiful sledge drawn by the fleetest reindeer, or to make one in the merry skating parties which were the great amusement of his court.