The Olive Fairy Book Part 15

'Where did you pick up that strange object? She is very ugly to be sure, but one ought to pity her for she has only two legs.'

'Yes, and no feelers,' added another; 'and she is so thin! Well, our brother has certainly very odd taste!'

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIA CARRIED OFF BY THE c.o.c.kCHAFER]

'Indeed he has!' echoed the others. And they repeated it so loud and so often that, in the end, he believed it too, and s.n.a.t.c.hing her up from the tree where he had placed her, set her down upon a daisy which grew near the ground.

Here Maia stayed for the whole summer, and really was not at all unhappy. She ventured to walk about by herself, and wove herself a bed of some blades of gra.s.s, and placed it under a clover leaf for shelter. The red cups that grew in the moss held as much dew as she wanted, and the c.o.c.kchafer had taught her how to get honey. But summer does not last for ever, and by-and-by the flowers withered, and instead of dew there was snow and ice. Maia did not know what to do, for her clothes were worn to rags, and though she tried to roll herself up in a dry leaf it broke under her fingers. It soon was plain to her that if she did not get some other shelter she would die of hunger and cold.

So, gathering up all her courage, she left the forest and crossed the road into what had been, in the summer, a beautiful field of waving corn, but was now only a ma.s.s of hard stalks. She wandered on, seeing nothing but the sky above her head, till she suddenly found herself close to an opening which seemed to lead underground.

'It will be warm, at any rate,' thought Maia, 'and perhaps the person who lives there will give me something to eat. At any rate, I can't be worse off than I am now.' And she walked boldly down the pa.s.sage.

By-and-by she came to a door which stood ajar, and, peeping in, discovered a whole room full of corn. This gave her heart, and she went on more swiftly, till she reached a kitchen where an old field mouse was baking a cake.

'You poor little animal,' cried the mouse, who had never seen anything like her before, 'you look starved to death! Come and sit here and get warm, and share my dinner with me.'

Maia almost wept with joy at the old mouse's kind words. She needed no second bidding, but ate more than she had ever done in her life, though it was not a breakfast for a humming-bird! When she had quite finished she put out her hand and smiled, and the old mouse said to her:

'Can you tell stories? If so you may stay with me till the sun gets hot again, and you shall help me with my house. But it is dull here in the winter unless you have somebody clever enough to amuse you.'

Yes, Maia had learned a great many stories from her foster-mother, and, besides, there were all her own adventures, and her escapes from death. She knew also how a room should be swept, and never failed to get up early in the morning and have everything clean and tidy for the old mouse.

So the winter pa.s.sed away pleasantly, and Maia began to talk of the spring, and of the time when she would have to go out into the world again and seek her fortune.

'Oh, you need not begin to think of _that_ for a while yet,' answered the field-mouse. 'Up on the earth they have a proverb:

When the day lengthens Then the cold strengthens;

it has been quite warm up to now, and the snow may fall any time.

Never a winter goes by without it, and _then_ you will be very thankful you are _here_, and not outside! But I dare say it is quiet for a young thing like you,' she added, 'and I have invited my neighbour the mole to come and pay us a visit. He has been asleep all these months, but I hear he is waking up again. You would be a lucky girl if he took into his head to marry you, only, unfortunately, he is blind, and cannot see how pretty you are.' And for this blindness Maia felt truly glad, as she did not want a mole for a husband.

However, by-and-by he paid his promised visit, and Maia did not like him at all. He might be as rich and learned as possible, but he hated the sun, and the trees, and the flowers, and all that Maia loved best.

To be sure, being blind, he had never seen them, and, like many other people, he thought that anything _he_ did not know was not worth knowing. But Maia's tales amused him, though he would not for the world have let her see it, and he admired her voice when she sang:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow?

Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top;

though he told her that it was all nonsense, and that trees and gardens were mere foolishness. When she was _his_ wife he would teach her things better worth learning.

'Meanwhile,' he said, with a grand air, 'I have burrowed a pa.s.sage from this house to my own, in which you can walk; but I warn you not to be frightened at a great dead creature that has fallen through a hole in the roof, and is lying on one side.'

'What sort of creature is it?' asked Maia eagerly.

'Oh, I really can't tell you,' answered the mole, indifferently; 'it is covered with something soft, and it has two thin legs, and a long sharp thing sticking out of its head.'

'It is a bird,' cried Maia joyfully, 'and I love birds! It must have died of cold,' she added, dropping her voice. 'Oh! good Mr. Mole, do take me to see it!'

'Come then, as I am going home,' replied the mole. And calling to the old field-mouse to accompany them, they all set out.

'Here it is,' said the mole at last; 'dear me, how thankful I am Fate did not make me a bird. They can't say anything but "twit, twit," and die with the first breath of cold.'

'Ah, yes, poor useless creature,' answered the field-mouse. But while they were talking, Maia crept round to the other side and stroked the feathers of the little swallow, and kissed his eyes.

All that night she lay awake, thinking of the swallow lying dead in the pa.s.sage. At length she could bear it no longer, and stole away to the place where the hay was kept, and wove a thick carpet. Next she went to the field-mouse's store of cotton which she picked in the summer from some of the marsh flowers, and carrying them both down the pa.s.sage, she tucked the cotton underneath the bird and spread the hay quilt over him.

'Perhaps you were one of the swallows who sang to me in the summer,'

said she. 'I wish I could have brought you to life again; but now, good-bye!' And she laid her face, wet with tears, on the breast of the bird. Surely she felt a faint movement against her cheek? Yes, there it was again! Suppose the bird was not dead after all, but only senseless with cold and hunger! And at this thought Maia hastened back to the house, and brought some grains of corn, and a drop of water in a leaf. This she held close to the swallow's beak, which he opened unconsciously, and when he had sipped the water she gave him the grains one by one.

'Make no noise, so that no one may guess you are not dead,' she said.

'To-night I will bring you some more food, and I will tell the mole that he must stuff up the hole again, as it makes the pa.s.sage too cold for me to walk in. And now farewell.' And off she went, back to the field-mouse, who was sound asleep.

After some days of Maia's careful nursing, the swallow felt strong enough to talk, and he told Maia how he came to be in the place where she found him. Before he was big enough to fly very high he had torn his wing in a rosebush, so that he could not keep up with his family and friends when they took their departure to warmer lands. In their swift course they never noticed that their little brother was not with them, and at last he dropped on the ground from sheer fatigue, and must have rolled down the hole into the pa.s.sage.

It was very lucky for the swallow that both the mole and the field-mouse thought he was dead, and did not trouble about him, so that when the spring _really_ came, and the sun was hot, and blue hyacinths grew in the woods and primroses in the hedges, he was as tall and strong as any of his companions.

'You have saved my life, dear little Maia,' said he; 'but now the time has come for me to leave you--unless,' he added, 'you will let me carry you on my back far away from this gloomy prison.'

Maia's eyes sparkled at the thought, but she shook her head bravely.

'Yes, you must go; but I must stay behind,' she answered. 'The field-mouse has been good to me, and I cannot desert her like that. Do you think you can open the hole for yourself?' she asked anxiously.

'If so, you had better begin now, for this evening we are to have supper with the mole, and it would never do for my foster-mother to find you working at it.'

'That is true,' answered the swallow. And flying up to the roof,--which, after all, was not very high above them--he set to work with his bill, and soon let a flood of suns.h.i.+ne into the dark place.

'_Won't_ you come with me, Maia?' said he. And though her heart longed for the trees and the flowers, she answered as before:

'No, I cannot.'

That one glimpse of the sun was all Maia had for some time, for the corn sprung up so thickly over the hole and about the house, that there might almost as well have been no sun at all. However, though she missed her bird friend every moment, she had no leisure to be idle, for the field-mouse had told her that very soon she was to be married to the mole, and kept her spinning wool and cotton for her outfit. And as she had never in her life made a dress, four clever spiders were persuaded to spend the days underground, turning the wool and cotton into tiny garments. Maia liked the clothes, but hated the thought of the blind mole, only she did not know how to escape him. In the evenings, when the spiders were going to their homes for the night, she would walk with them to the door and wait till a puff of wind blew the corn ears apart, and she could see the sky.

'If the swallow would only come now,' she said to herself, 'I would go with him to the end of the world.' But he never came!

'Your outfit is all finished,' said the field-mouse one day when the berries were red and the leaves yellow, 'and the mole and I have decided that your wedding shall be in four weeks' time.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIA AND THE SPIDERS IN THE EVENING]

'Oh, not so soon! not so soon!' cried Maia, bursting into tears; which made the field-mouse very angry, and declare that Maia had no more sense than other girls, and did not know what was good for her. Then the mole arrived, and carried her on his back to see the new house he had dug for her, which was so very far under ground that Maia's tiny legs could never bring her up even as high as the field-mouse's dwelling, from which she might see the sunlight. Her heart grew heavier and heavier as the days went by, and in the last evening of all she crept out into the field among the stubble, to watch the sun set before she bade it good-bye for ever.

'Farewell, farewell,' she said 'and farewell to my little swallow. Ah!

if he only knew, he would come to help me.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE HELPED HER TO JUMP FROM THE SWALLOW'S BACK]

'Twit! twit,' cried a voice just above her; and the swallow fluttered to the ground beside her. 'You look sad; are you _really_ going to let that ugly mole marry you?'

'I shall soon die, that is one comfort,' she answered weeping. But the swallow only said: