The day was very hot and very long, and the warmth greatly helped the weary hen in performing her duties. She stuck to her post all the time she was having her supper, and she knew that her eggs would soon be hatched; but neither she nor her husband had quite reckoned for the warmth of the day. Just when the cock was going to roost, well satisfied with his wife, and certain that his fondest hopes would be realized to-morrow, crack, crack! peep, peep! out came a tiny sparrow from the egg in the warmest corner of the nest, full three hours before the Jubilee day was to begin!
She called her husband—
“Oh what a little darling,” she cried. “Oh, what a lovely little yellow beak! and what a sweet crumply little red skin!” And she forgot all about the Jubilee.
“What a horrid little wretch you mean,” said the cock sparrow. “An impudent, pushing little ugly brute, to come out just at the wrong time! And he would have seized it and thrust it out of the nest, if the poor delighted mother had not spread her wings quite over it.
“Oh, don’t be so cruel,” she said, “please don’t; I’ll hatch another to-morrow, if I possibly can. I’ll sit all day, and never even want to go and see the procession, as you promised I should.”
“Very well,” said the cock. “You stay here and sit close till you’ve hatched another. Not one bit of food shall that little monster have from me, till his brother is born. And if he is not born to-morrow, it’ll be very much the worse for you, my dear!”
He went to roost again, and his wife cuddled herself down once more on the eggs, and fondled her little new-born chick. All night long the hammering of boards went on in the streets below, where the preparations were being finished for the procession, and the poor hen passed a very sleepless night. Her body was tired, and she was dreadfully afraid of her husband’s anger, if she should fail in her duty. “But, after all,” she thought, “one must go through a good deal if one is to have a husband who lives in a palace and is connected with the highest families in the land!”
The next day was, as we all remember, another very hot one. The sun blazed down upon the poor hen sparrow, who was obliged to keep sitting close all day, until she really thought she must have died with heat and anxiety. Not for one minute would her husband allow her to leave the nest and look at the processions. He perched on a chimney whence he could see her on the nest, and also see the procession coming through from Buckingham Palace; and he described it all to her from his chimney, but what was the good of that? She might just as well have read it in the newspapers the next morning.
All day long she sat on those three remaining eggs, and it really seemed as if they would never crack. The cock got more and more angry and impatient. “We shall be disgraced,” he cried, when the processions were all over, and still no second chick; “we shall be disgraced, and we shall have to leave the Palace. I shall, at least; you may stay if you like: you have no connection with the royal family and no sense of shame.”
The hen could say nothing. She was doing her best, poor thing, and she could do no more. Hour after hour passed, and still no egg burst. At last, as the big clock on the Palace struck seven, crack! peep!—a second little sparrow poked out its bill into this wicked world.