"I sing songs," the boy said emphatically. "I don't run errands for anyone save it be for the fairies."
"Well, then, you have come to tell us that we are bad, that our lives are corrupt and our homes sordid. Nowadays there's money in that if you can do it well."
"Your wit gets up too early in the morning for me, baker," said the boy. "I tell you I sing songs."
"Aye, I know, but there's something in them, I hope. Perhaps you bring news. They're not so popular as the other sort, but still, as long as it's bad news—"
"Is it the flour that has changed his brains to dough, or the heat of the oven that has made them like dead grass?"
"But you must have some news——?"
"News! It's a fine morning of summer, and I saw a kingfisher across the watermeadows coming along. Oh, and there's a cuckoo back in the fir plantation, singing with a May voice. It must have been asleep all these months."
"But, my dear boy, these things happen every day. Are there no battles or earthquakes or famines in the world? Has no man murdered his wife or robbed his neighbour? Is no one oppressed by tyrants or lied to by their officers."
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
"I hope not," he said. "But if it were so, and I knew, I should not tell you. I don't want to make you unhappy."