And in the field the children play,
But the little linnet has flown away:
Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!

THE BAD GIRL.

She was always called the bad girl, for she had once, when she was very
little, put out her tongue at the postman. She lived alone with her
grandmother and her three brothers in the cottage beyond the field, and
the girls in the village took no notice of her. The bad girl did not
mind this, for she was always thinking of the cuckoo clock. The clock
stood in one corner of the cottage, and every hour a door opened at the
top of its face, and a little cuckoo came out and called its name just
the same number of times that the clock ought to have struck, and
called it so loudly and in so much haste that the clock was afraid to
strike at all. The bad girl was always wondering whether it was worse
for the clock to have a cupboard in its forehead, and a bird that was
always hopping in and out, or for the poor cuckoo to spend so much time
in a dark little prison. "If it could only get away to the woods," she
said to herself, "who knows but its voice might grow sweet, and even
life itself might come to it!" She thought of the clock so much that
her grandmother used to say--

"Ah, lassie, if you would only think of me sometimes!" But the bad girl
would answer--

"You are not in prison, granny dear, and you have not even a bee in
your bonnet, let alone a bird in your head. Why should I think of you?"

One day, close by the farm, she saw the big girls from the school
gathering flowers.

"Give me one," she said; "perhaps the cuckoo would like it." But they
all cried, "No, no!" and tried to frighten her away. "They are for the
little one's birthday. To-morrow she will be seven years old," they
said, "and she is to have a crown of flowers and a cake, and all the
afternoon we shall play merry games with her."

"Is she unhappy, that you are taking so much trouble for her?" asked
the bad girl.

"Oh, no; she is very happy: but it will be her birthday, and we want to
make her happier."

"Why?"

"Because we love her," said one;

"Because she is so little," said another;

"Because she is alive," said a third.

"Are all things that live to be loved and cared for?" the bad girl
asked, but they were too busy to listen, so she went on her way
thinking; and it seemed as if all things round--the birds, and bees,
and the rustling leaves, and the little tender wild flowers