fell
from it.

"Oh, a nest," she gasped. "Look, I have hoed up a nest."

"Good gracious," exclaimed a fairy. "Look what she's done. It's
Clement's nest, poor chap, he only married in February. Say, girls,
here's Clement's semi-detached gone up."

Cries of consternation were heard from every bean-row.

Clement's nest was really almost more than semi-detached. It had been
but lightly wedged between two buttercup stalks. The two eggs in it were
at once unseated, and one was broken. Sarah Brown was deeply distressed.

"What a blind fool I am," she said, trying helplessly to replace the
nest. "Won't Clement ever come back?"

"Mrs. Clement won't," said the nearest fairy. "She is almost hysterical
about the sanctity of the home, and all that. She'll probably get a
divorce now."

"Oh, poor Clement, poor Clement," said Sarah Brown. "Will he be terribly
cut up?"

"There he is," replied the fairy, pointing upward. "He's watching you.
That's Clement's voice you hear."

"Clement's voice," exclaimed Sarah Brown. "Singing like that? Why, he
sounds perfectly happy."

"Perfectly happy," mocked the fairy. "His family only sings like that
when it's upset. Perfectly happy indeed! Can't you understand tragedy
when you hear it?"

Sarah Brown with despairing care tucked the nest up under a bean, and
replaced the unbroken egg.

"Do you mean to tell me, then," she said, after a busy painful pause,
"that Shelley probably misunderstood that lark he wrote a poem about? He
called it a blithe spirit, you know, because it sang. Do you suppose it
wasn't one?"

"Certainly not," said the fairy. "I don't know the actual facts of the
case, but without a doubt your friend Shelley was standing on the
unfortunate bird's nest all the time he was writing his poem."

Sarah Brown, with a deep sigh, began hoeing again.

Fifty beans yet.

She had altogether ceased to find pleasure in the day. Pain is an
extinguisher that can put out the sun. She had ceased to find pleasure
in the singing of the birds, the voice of the pigeon sounded to her no
more than an unbeautiful falsetto growl. She was irritated by the fact
that the cuckoo had only one song to sing. She tried not to hoe in time
to that song, but the monotony of it possessed her. Her row of beans
stretched in front of her right across the world; every time she looked
along it the end seemed farther away. Every time she raised her hoe the
sword of pain slipped under her guard.

The Dog