cuckoo, bring me one of them!"

Before another word could be spoken the cuckoo had flown out of the open
door, and was shouting its spring cry over moor and meadow.

The brothers were poorer than ever that year. Nobody would send them a
single shoe to mend, and Scrub and Spare would have left the village
but for their barley-field and their cabbage-garden. They sowed their
barley, planted their cabbage, and, now that their trade was gone,
worked in the rich villagers' fields to make out a scanty living.

So the seasons came and passed; spring, summer, harvest, and winter
followed each other as they have done from the beginning. At the end of
the latter Scrub and Spare had grown so poor and ragged that their old
neighbors forgot to invite them to wedding feasts or merrymakings,
and the brothers thought the cuckoo had forgotten them, too, when at
daybreak on the first of April they heard a hard beak knocking at their
door, and a voice crying:--

"Cuckoo! cuckoo! Let me in with my presents!"

Spare ran to open the door, and in came the cuckoo, carrying on one
side of its bill a golden leaf larger than that of any tree in the North
Country; and in the other side of its bill, one like that of the common
laurel, only it had a fresher green.

"Here," it said, giving the gold to Scrub and the green to Spare, "it is
a long carriage from the world's end. Give me a slice of barley bread,
for I must tell the North Country that the spring has come."

Scrub did not grudge the thickness of that slice, though it was cut
from their last loaf. So much gold had never been in the cobbler's hands
before, and he could not help exulting over his brother.

"See the wisdom of my choice," he said, holding up the large leaf of
gold. "As for yours, as good might be plucked from any hedge, I wonder a
sensible bird would carry the like so far."

"Good master cobbler," cried the cuckoo, finishing its slice,
"your conclusions are more hasty than courteous. If your brother is
disappointed this time, I go on the same journey every year, and for
your hospitable entertainment will think it no trouble to bring each of
you whichever leaf you desire."

"Darling cuckoo," cried Scrub, "bring me a golden one."

And Spare, looking up from the green leaf on which he gazed as though it
were a crown-jewel, said:--

"Be sure to bring me one from the merry tree."

And away flew the cuckoo.

"This is the feast of All Fools, and it ought to be your bir