“No, dear Emperor,” said the little Nightingale, “I sing best when I am free; I cannot live in a palace.  But every night when you are quite alone, I will come and sit in the window and sing to you, and tell you everything that goes on in your kingdom:  I will tell you where the poor people are who ought to be helped, and where the wicked people are who ought to be punished.  Only, dear Emperor, be sure that you never let anybody know that you have a little bird who tells you everything.”

After the little Nightingale had flown away, the Emperor felt so well and strong that he dressed himself in his royal robes and took his gold sceptre in his hand.  And when the courtiers came in to see if he were dead, there stood the Emperor with his sword in one hand and his sceptre in the other, and said, “Good-morning!”

FOOTNOTES: 

[25] Adapted from Hans Christian Andersen.

MARGERY’S GARDEN[26]

There was once a little girl named Margery, who had always lived in the city.  The flat where her mother and father lived was at the top of a big building, and you couldn’t see a great deal from the windows, except chimney-pots on other people’s roofs.  Margery did not know much about trees and flowers, but she loved them dearly; whenever it was a fine Sunday she used to go with her mother and father to the park and look at the lovely flower-beds.  They seemed always to be finished, though, and Margery was always wishing she could see them grow.

One spring, when Margery was nine, her father obtained a new situation and they removed to a little house with a nice big piece of ground a short distance outside the town where his new position was.  Margery was delighted.  And the very first thing she said, when her father told her about it, was, “Oh, may I have a garden? May I have a garden?”

Margery’s mother was almost as eager for a garden as she was, and Margery’s father said he expected to live on their vegetables all the rest of his life!  So it was soon agreed that the garden should be the first thing attended to.

Behind the cottage were apple trees, a plum tree, and two or three pear trees; then came a stretch of rough grass, and then a stone wall, with a gate leading into the fields.  It was on the grass plot that the garden was to be.  A big piece was to be used for wheat and peas and beans, and a little piece at the end was to be given to Margery.

“What shall we have in it?” asked her mother.

“Flowers,” said Margery, with shining eyes,—­“blue, and white, and yellow, and pink,—­every kind of flower!”

“Surely, flowers,” said her mother, “and shall we not have a little salad garden in the middle?”

“What is a salad garden?” Margery asked.

“It is a garden where you have all the things that make nice salad,” said her mother, laughing, for Margery was fond of salads; “you have lettuce, and endive, and mustard and cress, and parsley, and radishes, and beetroot, and young onions.”