“No indeed,” said Jem; “we’ve had nothing ourselves—not since yesterday at dinner time. And it is so cold.”
I stood still on one leg, and chirped that I was very sorry. I think they understood me.
“Mother’s gone to Farmer Bantry’s,” said Joyce, as if she was glad to have some one—“even a bird,” some folk who know precious little about us would say—to tell her troubles to. “They’re cleanin’ up for Christmas, and she’ll get a shilling and maybe some broken victuals, she said. So we’re tryin’ to go to sleep again to make the time pass.”
“There was two sixpences yesterday,” said Jem, mournfully; “and one would ’a got some coal, and t’other some bread and tea. But the doctor said as father must have somefin’—” (Jem was only five and Joyce eight)—“queer stuff—I forget the name—to wunst. So mother she went to the shop, and father’s got the stuff, and he’s asleep; but we’ve not had nuffin’.”
“And Christmas is coming next week, mother says,” Joyce added. “Last Christmas we had new shoes, and meat for dinner.”
I was sadly grieved for them. Joyce spoke in a dull, broken sort of tone that did not sound like a child. But I hoped to serve them better than by standing there repeating my regret; so, after a few more chirps of sympathy, I flew off.
“Robin doesn’t care to stay,” said Jem, dolefully.
Later in the day I met the children’s mother trudging home. She looked tired; but she had a basket on her arm, so I hoped the farmer’s wife had given them some scraps which would help them for the time.
Now I had a plan in my head. Late that afternoon, after flying all round the Manor House and peeping in at a great many windows, I perched in the ivy—there was ivy over a great part of the walls—just outside one on the first floor. It was the children’s bedroom. I waited anxiously, afraid that I might have no chance of getting in; but fortunately for me the fire smoked a little when it was lighted in the evening for the young ladies to be dressed by, and the nurse opened the window a tiny bit, so in I flew, very careful not to be seen, you may be sure. I found a very cosy corner on the edge of a picture in a dark part of the room, and there I had time for a nap before Norna and Ivy came to bed. Then when all was silent for the night, I flew down and took up my quarters on the rail at the head of Norna’s bed; and when I had spent an hour or so beside her, I gently fluttered across to her sister; and though I was chirping nearly all the time, my voice was so low that no one entering the room would have noticed it; or if they had done so, they would probably have thought it a drowsy cricket, half aroused by the pleasant warmth of the fire.
But my chirping did more than soothe my little friends’ slumbers (and here the robin cocked his head afresh and looked very solemn). Children (he said), human beings know very little about themselves. You don’t know, for instance, anything at all about yourselves when you’re asleep, or what dreams really are. You speak of being “sleepy,” or half-asleep, as if it meant something very stupid; whereas, sometimes when you are whole asleep, you are much wiser than when you are awake. Now it is not my business to teach you things you’re perhaps not meant to understand at present, but this I can tell you—if I perched on your pillows at night when you’re asleep, and chirped in my own way to you, you’d have no difficulty in understanding me. And this was what happened to the two little maidens a few nights before their first Christmas in England. They thought they had had a wonderful dream—each of them separately, and they never knew that the robin who flew out of the window early in the morning before any one noticed him, had had anything to do with it.