The Story Without an End (Austin, 1913)/Chapter 6
The Mouse and Lizard talk to the Child.
VI.
And as the Child sat there, a little mouse rustled from among the dry leaves of the former year, and a lizard half glided from a crevice in the rock, and both of them fixed their bright eyes upon the little stranger; and when they saw that he designed them no evil, they took courage and came nearer to him.
“I should like to live with you,” said the Child to the two little creatures, in a soft subdued voice, that he might not frighten them. “Your chambers are so snug, so warm, and yet so shaded, and the flowers grow in at your windows, and the birds sing you their morning song, and call you to table and to bed with their clear warblings.”
“Yes,” said the mouse, “it would be all very well if all the plants bore nuts and mast, instead of those silly flowers; and if I were not obliged to grub underground in the spring, and gnaw the bitter roots, whilst they are dressing themselves in their fine flowers, and flaunting it to the world, as if they had endless stores of honey in their cellars.”
“Hold your tongue,” interrupted the lizard pertly; “do you think, because you are grey, that other people must throw away their handsome clothes, or let them lie in the dark wardrobe under ground, and wear nothing but grey too? I am not so envious. The flowers may dress themselves as they like for me; they pay for it out of their own pockets, and they feed bees and beetles from their cups; but what I want to know is, of what use are birds in the world? Such a fluttering and chattering, truly, from morning early to evening late, that one is worried and stunned to death, and there is never a day’s peace for them. And they do nothing; only snap up the flies and the spiders out of the mouths of such as I. For my part, I should be perfectly satisfied, provided all the birds in the world were flies and beetles.”
The Child changed colour, and his heart was sick and saddened when he heard their evil tongues. He could not imagine how anybody could speak ill of the beautiful flowers, or scoff at his beloved birds. He was waked out of a sweet dream, and the wood seemed to him lonely and desert, and he was ill at ease. He started up hastily, so that the mouse and the lizard shrank back alarmed, and did not look around them till they thought themselves safe out of the reach of the stranger with the large severe eyes.