urs
doesn't play at all nicely. Just listen how wretched it sounds out here
in the wood, that eternal 'ting-ting, plang-plang.' The birds peep down
from the trees as though they were disgusted with that stupid musician
who insists on accompanying them." Felix turned the handle more and
more strenuously, and at length cried, "I think you're right,
Christlieb. What the little fellow plays sounds quite horrible. I'm
quite ashamed to see those thrushes there looking down at me with such
wise eyes. He must make a better job of it." With which Felix screwed
away at the handle with such force that crack! crack! the whole box on
which the harp-man stood flew into a thousand splinters, and his arms
fell down broken.

"Oh, oh!" Felix cried. "Ah! poor little harper!" sighed Christlieb.
Felix looked at the broken toy for a minute or two, and then said,
"Well, he was a stupid, senseless chap, after all. He played terribly
poor music, and made faces, and bowed and scraped like our cousin
Pump-breeks;" and he shied the harp-player as far as he could into the
thicket. "What I like is my sportsman here," he went on to say. "He
makes a bull's-eye every time he fires over and over again." And he
kept on making him score a long succession of bull's-eyes accordingly.

When this had gone on for some time, however, Felix said, "It's stupid,
all the same, that he should always make bull's-eyes; so very
unsportsmanlike, you know--papa says so. A real sportsman has got to
shoot deer, hares, and so forth, running. I can't have this chap going
on aiming at a target; mustn't be any more of it; one gets weary of it;
won't do." And Felix broke off the target which was fixed up in front
of the shooting-man. "Now then," he cried, "fire away into the open."

But it was in vain that he pulled at the thread; the little man's arms
hung limp and motionless; the gun rose no more to his shoulder--his
shooting was at an end.

"Ha! ha!" Felix cried; "you could shoot at your target indoors; but out
in the woods here, where the sportsman's home is, you can't, eh? I
suppose you're afraid of dogs, too; and if one were to come you would
take to your heels, gun and all, as cousin Pump-breeks did with his
sword, wouldn't you? ugh! you stupid, useless dunderhead;" with which
Felix shied him into the bushes after the harp-man.

"Come, let's run about a bit," he said to Christlieb. "Ah, yes, let
us," said she; "this lovely doll of mine shall run with us too; that
w