“Oh,” said the baker dully, for he had hoped the boy was in search of work.  “Then I suppose you have a message.”

“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.”

“But of what use are you then, if it be not to rouse in us the discontent that is alone divine?  Would you have me go fat and happy, listening to your babble of kingfishers and cuckoos, while my brothers and sisters in the world are starving?”

The boy was silent for a moment.

“I give my songs to the poor for nothing,” he said slowly.  “Certainly they are not much use to empty bellies, but they are all I have to give.  And I take it, since you speak so feelingly, that you, too, do your best.  And these others, these people who must be reminded hourly to throw their crusts out of window for the poor—­would you have me sing to them?  They must be told that life is evil, and I find it good; that men and women are wretched, and I find them happy; that food and cleanliness, order and knowledge are the essence of content while I only ask for love.  Would you have me lie to cheat mean folk out of their scraps?”

The baker scratched his head in astonishment.

“Certainly you are very mad,” he said.  “But you won’t get much money in this town with that sort of talk.  You had better come in and have breakfast with me.”

“But why do you ask me?” said the boy, in surprise.

“Well, you have a decent, honest sort of face, although your tongue is disordered.”

“I had rather it had been because you liked my songs,” said the boy, and he went in to breakfast with the baker.

II