, sir.

TALKER (admiringly). What intelligence! What profundity! (To MOTHER)
Madam, I felicitate you again on your daughter. Unerringly she has laid
her finger on the weak joint in our armour. We have no woman's voice.

MOTHER. Well, Sir, I don't see how I can help you.

TALKER. Madame, you have a nightingale. It has lived in a cage all its
life. It looks through the bars sometimes, and sees the great world
outside, and sighs and turns back to its business of singing. Madame, it
would sing better outside in the open air, with the other birds.

MOTHER. I don't understand you, sir. Are you referring to my daughter?

TALKER (looking towards the window). There is a stream which runs beyond
the road, with a green bank to it. We were seated on that bank, I and
my two companions, eating our bread and cheese, and washing it down with
draughts from that good stream. We were tired, for we had come from over
the hills that morning, and it was good to lie on our backs there and
watch the little clouds taking shape after shape in the blue, and so
to dream our dreams. In a little while the road would take us westward,
here through a wood banked with primroses, there across a common or
between high spring hedges with the little stream babbling ever at the
side of us. And in the evening we would come to an inn, where there
would be good company, and we would sing and play to them, and they
would reward us. (With a shrug) It is a pleasant life.

DAUGHTER (eagerly). Oh, go on!

MOTHER. Yes, go on, Sir.

TALKER. We were lying on our backs thus, Madame, when we heard the
nightingale. "Duke," says I, "it is early yet for the nightingale." His
Flutiness removes his cap from his face, takes a squint at the sun, and
says "Monstrous early, good Master Johannes," and claps his cap
back again. "What says you, Fiddler," says I, "in this matter of
nightingales? Is it possible," says I; "the sun being where it is, and
nightingales being what they are--to wit, nightingales?" "It's not a
nightingale," says Fiddler dreamily, "it's a girl." "Then," says I,
jumping up, "it is a girl we want. She must put the red feather in
her cap, and come her ways with us." (With a bow) Madame, your humble
servant.

DAUGHTER. Oh, Mother, you will let me go, won't you? I must, I must! He
is quite right. I'm caged here. Oh, you will let me see something of the
world before I grow old!

FIDDLER (suddenly). Yes, let her come. If she feels like that, she ought
t