"So let us
give it away. I hate waste."
"I doubt," said the titlark, "it will be much profit to him,
wonderful though it is."
"Well," said the wren, "a present's a present. Folks with a living
to get must give what they can afford."
It is not wise, as a rule, to sleep on the bare ground in December.
But Young John awoke warm and jolly as a sandboy. He picked up his
gun. It was bent and curiously twisted in the barrel. "Hallo!" said
he, and peered closely into the short turf where it had lain. . . .
When he reached home his mother cried out joyfully, seeing his
game-bag and how it bulged. She cried out to a different tune when
he showed her what it contained--clods and clumps of turf, matted
over with a tiny close-growing plant that might have been any common
moss for aught she knew (or recked) of the difference.
"But where are all the birds you promised me?"
He held out his gun--he had promised no birds, but that mattered
nothing. His father took it to the lamp and glanced at it; put on
his horn spectacles slowly, and peered at it. He was silent for a
long while. Young John had turned inattentively from his mother's
reproaches, and stood watching him.
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