THE CUCKOO WHOSE NEST WAS MADE

FOR HER.

IF you have been wisely and well brought up, you will have read the story of the man who killed the cuckoo. This, on the contrary, is the story of one who tried to do a cuckoo a good turn. But they did not remain friends afterwards, as you shall hear.

Cobbin, when he began life on his own account, having lost father and mother, was not thought much of by those who employed him, however much they came to think of him afterwards; so, as he seemed fit for nothing better, they sent him into the fields to scare birds. Before long he knew more about birds than he did about his fellow-men, understanding their talk and their ways, as we also should were we not so concerned over ourselves. He knew all the kinds, and their qualities, how some were peaceloving, and some quarrelsome, many foolish, and a few wise; and he knew that of all the birds that flew under heaven the cuckoo was the vainest of heart. Its very note was a crow over other birds. You slave for a living, while I live idle,' was its boast. 'I lay my eggs, and you hatch them! I, the cuckoo, am the most indolent of birds; you, the drudges, listen, and be envious !'

Cobbin would talk now and then to a cuckoo which came and sat in the tree under which he plied his clappers; and the bird's answers to him were all pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy. Never was a creature so contented with itself, having so little to be proud of.

'I should be ashamed,' said Cobbin, 'to be a bird, and not know how to make a nest.'

'Who says I don't know how to make a nest?' retorted the cuckoo. I have no need for one. Other birds are only too pleased to look after my brood for me. Why waste my time?' 'You do nothing but waste it,' said Cobbin. 'Not if I get what I want out of it; that's not wasting it! "Stuff while you can, and be lazy while you may," is my motto.' Cobbin threw a stone up at the bird, and drove her away. 'Go and be lazy somewhere else, then!' said he. 'I'm tired of you.'

But the cuckoo had the most imperturbable good opinion of herself, and was back again the next day talking on the same dear

topic-the pleasure it was to have her own whimsical way in life. The cuckoo says a great many things on its two notes to those that have ears to hear it.

Now Cobbin was cunning in his own slow way, when he allowed himself to think at all; and he remembered that in a week's time there was to be a great cattle-market and sheep-fair on One Tree Hill, to which all the world would be coming. So the next day he said to the cuckoo: 'I have been telling folk that you could easily build a nest for yourself if you chose to ; but not a soul will believe me. They say laziness has made you clumsy of claw; some even think you have grown web-footed.'

'They think that, do they?' said the cuckoo, ruffling at the injustice of it.

'Now,' said Cobbin, 'I have been thinking that to make a nest because you want one may be a poor sort of thing to do; but to make a nest that you haven't the least use for, merely for the honour and glory of it-that would be rather fine, wouldn't it?

'Hey?' said the cuckoo. That sounds reasonable. Say it again, will you?'

Cobbin repeated his proposition, and the cuckoo sat with head on one side, lifting first one claw and then the other, considering the matter.

'Well,' she said at last, 'I don't say there isn't something in it. I'll think it over.' And, so saying, she flew away to fresh pastures. The next day she returned. What are people saying about me now?' she inquired, choosing a bough to sit down on :-' me and my nest, I mean.'

'Not much that's new,' replied Cobbin. When I told them you were thinking about it, they laughed, and said you might think till your tail-feathers fell out, but that nothing else would ever come of it.'

6

This did not please the cuckoo any more than the previous saying had done. That shows their ignorance,' said she. As a matter of fact, I have designed one; but I'm too lazy to carry it out.'

Cobbin said: 'If you would only start making it, why, you would have all the people from miles round to look at you!' 'Should I?' said the cuckoo.

'Thousands of them; and sheep, and horses, and cattle as well,' declared Cobbin. No end of them; and they would all stand round and say, "Look what a clever cuckoo it is! Who

says now that a cuckoo can't make a nest when there's honour and glory in doing it?""

'Ah!' said the cuckoo. 'To-morrow I will begin.'

'One Tree Hill would be a good place,' said Cobbin. 'I will tell everybody.'

The next day the cuckoo said: 'If you will first gather the sticks for me, and carry them up into the tree on One Tree Hill, I will do the arranging.'

Cobbin was quite ready. He gathered the sticks and climbed up into the tree with them; and the cuckoo played at arranging them. But, under her arrangement, they always fell down again, and Cobbin had to go down after them.

'You haven't brought me the right sort,' said the cuckoo. 'These are dirty; they soil my claws. You put them together, and I will tell you how to.'

So Cobbin put together the cuckoo's nest for her, while she looked on, giving him orders which he did not in the least follow. 'There,' said Cobbin, now you have built yourself a nest; but nobody will believe it is yours unless you lay one of your own eggs in it-merely for the honour and glory.'

'Lay an egg in it?' cried the cuckoo. Who's to look after it?"

'Oh, we will see to that presently,' said Cobbin. 'Be quick! To-morrow morning the people will be arriving! Be quick, or you will be too late to convince them.'

And, sure enough, on the morrow, the cuckoo looked out from the tree, and saw people and sheep and cattle in tens and hundreds and thousands arriving from all sides of the country at once. They are coming to see me,' she cried, excitedly laying an egg in the nest, so that there should be no mistake about it when the time camé.

She sat in the nest, and saw the crowd gathering below, and grew quite hot with excitement. But they don't seem to see me,' she said at last; they all seem as occupied as if they were laying eggs of their own, the idiots! If it is to be a race, we will see who can do it best,' and, putting a determined face on the matter, she promptly laid three more eggs.

And she was so hot on it, and sat so tight, waiting for the crowd to look up and pay her the honour that was due, that before Fair week was over a terrible thing happened. All at once the four eggshells cracked open, and out looked four scarey young cuckoos: 'Heaven help me!' cried the cuckoo, aghast. 'What has brought

this upon me? Do I see myself actually a mother?' She shifted uneasily about the nest, declaring that there was no longer a comfortable place to sit down in ; and the four little cuckoos pecked at her with might and main, crying, ‘Get up, you lazy thing, and feed us! Go out and get food for us, can't you?'

A sense of motherhood took possession of the unfortunate bird, and a harassing longing to fill the little stomachs, which refused to be sat on, drove her afield. All day she plied her task, having no mate to help her, and came back at nightfall quite weak of wing; and all the next day it was the same, and the next as well. On the fourth morning when she woke up she noticed what she had been too busy to notice before—that all the Fair people, with their sheep and cattle, had gone away without even looking at her. There, where had been thousands, sat Cobbin alone; he looked up at her with a friendly eye. 'Well,' said Cobbin, 'how do you feel now?' 'A little empty,' said the cuckoo.

gone without looking at me?'

Why have all the people

'Why, to tell the truth,' said Cobbin, when they saw you with a nest full of young, hard at work feeding them, they thought nothing of you. They said you were too good and ordinary to be a

cuckoo,'

'All those

'Then I have had all my pains for nothing!' cried the cuckoo. 'Oh, not for nothing,' said Cobbin consolingly. people who came here have gone away quite rich; they have sold thousands and thousands of sheep and cattle which they wouldn't

have done otherwise.'

The cuckoo thought a while before she said, 'And I have been sold, too!'

'You have,' said Cobbin; but look what a bargain—four young cuckoos, who will presently be as big and fine as you are, and a nest thrown in gratis.'

'You are a wicked boy,' said the cuckoo, and you have quite spoiled my summer holiday.'

'Your summer holiday was spoiling you,' said Cobbin.

Just then the four young cuckoos woke up, and dug their mother in the ribs so hard that they fairly jerked her out of the nest. Get up, you lazy thing, and fetch food for us!' they shouted.

'Oh, how I hate you;-and you, too!' she cried to Cobbin; but she did as she was bid. Maternity was a wonderful cure for her vapours, while it lasted; but she never forgave Cobbin. LAURENCE HOUSMAN.

HISTORICAL MYSTERIES.

BY ANDREW LANG.

V. THE CASE OF ELIZABETH CANNING.

Don't let your poor little

Lizzie be blamed!

THACKERAY.

'EVERYONE has heard of the case of Elizabeth Canning,' writes Mr. John Paget; and till recently I agreed with him. But five or six years ago the case of Elizabeth Canning repeated itself in a marvellous way, and then but few persons of my acquaintance had ever heard of that mysterious girl.

The recent case, so strange a parallel to that of 1753, was this: In Cheshire lived a young woman whose business in life was that of a daily governess. One Sunday her family went to church in the morning, but she set off to skate, by herself, on a lonely pond. She was never seen or heard of again till, in the dusk of the following Thursday, her hat was found outside of the door of her father's farmyard. Her friends discovered her hard by in a most miserable condition, weak, emaciated, and with her skull fractured. Her explanation was that a man had seized her on the ice, or as she left it, had dragged her across the fields, and had shut her up in a house, from which she escaped, crawled to her father's home, and, when she found herself unable to go further, tossed her hat towards the farm door. No such man as she described, and no house in which she had been imprisoned, were ever found. The girl's character was excellent, nothing pointed to her condition being the result d'une orgie échevelée; but the neighbours, of course, made insinuations, and a lady of my acquaintance, who visited the girl's mother, found herself almost alone in placing a charitable construction on the adventure.

My theory was that the girl had fractured her skull by a fall on the ice, had crawled to and lain in an unvisited outhouse of the farm, and on that Thursday night was wandering out, in a distraught state, not wandering in. Her story would be the result of her cerebral condition-concussion of the brain.

1 Copyright, 1904, by Andrew Lang, in the United States of America. VOL. XVI.-NO. 95, N.S.

41