He had just made a long tunnel through the ground from his house to theirs, and he gave the field-mouse and Thumbeline leave to walk in it whenever they liked. He told them not to be afraid of the dead bird which was lying in the passage. It was a whole bird with feathers and beak which had probably died quite recently at the beginning of the winter and was now entombed just where he had made his tunnel.
The mole took a piece of tinder-wood in his mouth, for that shines like fire in the dark, and walked in front of them to light them in the long dark passage; when they came to the place where the dead bird lay, the mole thrust his broad nose up to the roof and pushed the earth up so as to make a big hole through which the daylight shone. In the middle of the floor lay a dead swallow, with its pretty wings closely pressed to its sides, and the legs and head drawn in under the feathers; no doubt the poor bird had died of cold. Thumbeline was so sorry for it; she loved all the little birds, for they had twittered and sung so sweetly to her during the whole summer; but the mole kicked it with his short legs and said, “Now it will pipe no more! It must be a miserable fate to be born a little bird! Thank heaven! no child of mine can be a bird; a bird like that has nothing but its twitter and dies of hunger in the winter.”
“Yes, as a sensible man, you may well say that,” said the field-mouse. “What has a bird for all its twittering when the cold weather comes? It has to hunger and freeze, but then it must cut a dash.”
Thumbeline did not say anything, but when the others turned their backs to the bird, she stooped down and stroked aside the feathers which lay over its head, and kissed its closed eyes. “Perhaps it was this very bird which sang so sweetly to me in the summer,” she thought; “what pleasure it gave me, the dear pretty bird.”
The mole now closed up the hole which let in the daylight and conducted the ladies to their home. Thumbeline could not sleep at all in the night, so she got up out of her bed and plaited a large handsome mat of hay and then she carried it down and spread it all over the dead bird, and laid some soft cotton wool which she had found in the field-mouse’s room close round its sides, so that it might have a warm bed on the cold ground.
“Good-bye, you sweet little bird,” said she, “good-bye, and thank you for your sweet song through the summer when all the trees were green and the sun shone warmly upon us.” Then she laid her head close up to the bird’s breast, but was quite startled at a sound, as if something was thumping inside it. It was the bird’s heart. It was not dead but lay in a swoon, and now that it had been warmed it began to revive.
In the autumn all the swallows fly away to warm countries, but if one happens to be belated, it feels the cold so much that it falls down like a dead thing, and remains lying where it falls till the snow covers it up. Thumbeline quite shook with fright for the bird was very, very big beside her, but she gathered up her courage, packed the wool closer round the poor bird, and fetched a leaf of mint which she had herself for a coverlet and laid it over the bird’s head. The next night she stole down again to it and found it alive but so feeble that it could only just open its eyes for a moment to look at Thumbeline who stood with a bit of tinder-wood in her hand, for she had no other lantern.
“Many, many thanks, you sweet child,” said the sick swallow to her; “you have warmed me beautifully. I shall soon have strength to fly out into the warm sun again.”
“Oh!” said she, “it is so cold outside, it snows and freezes, stay in your warm bed, I will tend you.” Then she brought water to the swallow in a leaf, and when it had drunk some, it told her how it had torn its wing on a blackthorn bush, and therefore could not fly as fast as the other swallows which were taking flight then for the distant warm lands. At last it fell down on the ground, but after that it remembered nothing and did not in the least know how it had got into the tunnel.