The Story of a Dewdrop | Page 4

Sun; and he was bound in all sincerity to
add, that it seemed rather a dull and uninteresting tear to boot.

"I know better," growled the Thrush. (I have used the word "growl,"
because I can find no better to describe the reality.) Growling, I am
well aware, is a very uncommon demonstration of feeling in the case of
a warbler. At all events, if it was not a growl, it was the nearest
approach his beak could make to one, as he turned on the pillow which
had been thus rudely disturbed. After, however, dozing for a few more
hours, breakfast over, and his family seen to, off he sped with all his
former cheerfulness and activity, till he found himself perched on a
branch of the very tallest elm-tree he could pick out, and one, too, right
above where the rose and the dewdrop were. Dear me! how he piped,
and chirruped, and throstled! I thought the Nightingale had done
wonders in that way; but it was nothing to the Thrush. He doubtless
was under the impression that the Dewdrop was sound asleep, and
needed no ordinary efforts in the way of rousing. I am sure if one could
have dived under the yellow feathers, the little throat must have been
purple.
After these musical preliminaries, our new friend (Songster No. 2)
ventured by-and-by to come nearer. But, in doing so, he could hardly
believe his eyes, specially after what the Nightingale had told him.
"A teardrop" indeed! There was not a bit of the tear about it. Where had
been the Nightingale's eyes? It was something at all events very like a
bright, unmistakable, beautiful diamond on which the Thrush looked.
How it glistened and sparkled; and that too with all the prismatic
colours! The spectator could only (what was an effort to any member of
the Thrush family) gaze in mute wonder.
"What in all the world can you be, you lovely, silent sleeper on the
rose-leaf, with your round crystal cheeks? Dewdrop we thought you
were; teardrop you say you are: I cannot think you are either. If you are
not a diamond set in rubies--stolen, for anything I know, from
yesterday's rainbow--you look the thing uncommonly well."
"I am indeed a diamond," answered the Dewdrop. "Look at me," said
the little gleaming dot, with the air of an aristocrat; "do you not say I
am fit for a monarch's crown? And it is a monarch's crown I am
presently to be set in. Every day I meet the Queen of the

Morning.--Stay," it suddenly exclaimed, "I see her even now advancing
with her rosy feet, 'sowing the earth with pearls.' See, for yourself, how
the few stars which still linger in the sky, and which with their
glittering torches lighted her out of the Eastern Gate, are paling every
minute behind her! She says, of all the jewels in her tiara there is not
one she is fonder of, or prouder of, than me. Away, away, little bird,"
stammered out the Dewdrop, with some nervous twitchings presently to
be accounted for; "I must prepare to meet this Queen Aurora. But," it
added in a kind of afterthought, "the procession will soon be over;
come back shortly and see me, if you please." The keen diamond eye
twinkled with a humorous, comical expression when these last words
were uttered; as much as to say, "I shall manage to cheat you, old
fellow, wont I?"
The Thrush had some small quantum of poetry in his nature; but he had
a great deal of shrewd common sense too, and an immense idea of
propriety. Accordingly, he at once took the hint as to departure; but
with guileless simplicity cherished the resolution of renewing the
intercourse, in an hour or two at latest, after the royal cavalcade had
swept by.
This interlude was no peculiar hardship to our erratic friend, who knew
he could spend the time merrily and profitably among his numerous
kinsfolk in the groves. To tell the truth, he was not sorry to get away
from the court pageantry, as all such ceremonial and pomp of
circumstance was an abomination to him, and had always been so. It
was, therefore, with pleasant anticipations of an early return that, by a
few fleet bounces, he was lost from sight in the nearest thicket.
Barely, however, had the specified period elapsed, when he was back
again upon his twig on the tall elm. He had certainly not exhausted his
strength or conversational music-powers in that round of morning visits,
for he renewed, then and there, his merriest notes, quite in the old style;
and after this prelude, by way of making sure that the course was clear,
he flew with more than wonted alacrity in the direction of the