e from the nail where he put it up himself for the last
time, thirty years ago.

But time flies, and the hour is come to get ready the midday dinner.
Fanchon's grandmother stirs up the drowsy fire; then she breaks the eggs
on the black earthenware platter. Fanchon is deeply interested in the
bacon omelette as she watches it browning and sputtering over the fire.
There is no one in the world like her grandmother for making omelettes
and telling pretty stories. Fanchon sits on the settle, her chin on
a level with the table, to eat the steaming omelette and drink the
sparkling cider. But her grandmother eats her dinner, from force of
habit, standing at the fireside. She holds her knife in her right hand,
and in the other a crust of bread with her toothsome morsel on it. When
both have done eating:

"Grandmother," says Fanchon, "tell me the 'Blue Bird.'"

And her grandmother tells Fanchon how, by the spite of a bad fairy, a
beautiful Prince was changed into a sky-blue bird, and of the grief the
Princess felt when she heard of the transformation and saw her love fly
all bleeding to the window of the Tower where she was shut up.

Fanchon thinks and thinks.

"Grandmother," she says at last, "is it a great while ago the Blue Bird
flew to the Tower where the Princess was shut up?"

Her grandmother tells her it was many a long day since, in the times
when the animals used to talk.

"You were young then?" asks Fanchon.

"I was not yet born," the old woman tells her.

And Fanchon says:

"So, grandmother, there were things in the world even before you were
born?"

And when their talk is done, her grandmother gives Fanchon an apple with
a hunch of bread and bids her:

"Run away, little one; go and play and eat your apple in the garden."

And Fanchon goes into the garden, where there are trees and grass and
flowers and birds.

II

[Illustration: 168]

HER grandmother's garden was full of grass and flowers and trees, and
Fanchon thought it was the prettiest garden in all the world. By this
time she had pulled out her pocket-knife to cut her bread with, as they
do in the village. First she munched her apple, then she began upon her
bread. Presently a little bird came fluttering past her. Then a second
came, and a third. Soon ten, twenty, thirty were crowding round Fanchon.
There were grey birds, and red, there were yellow birds, and green, and
blue. And all were pretty and they all sang. At first Fanchon could