h its horns
a peacock threw back its head and cried in harsh lamentation, having no
sweet voice wherewith to acclaim its prize. And so ever since it cries,
as it goes up into the boughs to roost, because it shares with the
nightingale its grief for the memory of departed beauty which never
returns to earth save once in a blue moon.

But Nillywill and Hands-pansy, living together in the blue moon, look
back upon the world, if now and then they choose to remember, without
any longing for it or sorrow.

A CHINESE FAIRY TALE

Tiki-pu was a small grub of a thing; but he had a true love of Art deep
down in his soul. There it hung mewing and complaining, struggling to
work its way out through the raw exterior that bound it.

Tiki-pu's master professed to be an artist: he had apprentices and
students, who came daily to work under him, and a large studio littered
about with the performances of himself and his pupils. On the walls hung
also a few real works by the older men, all long since dead.

This studio Tiki-pu swept; for those who worked in it he ground colours,
washed brushes, and ran errands, bringing them their dog chops and
bird's-nest soup from the nearest eating-house whenever they were too
busy to go out to it themselves. He himself had to feed mainly on the
breadcrumbs which the students screwed into pellets for their drawings
and then threw about upon the floor. It was on the floor, also, that he
had to sleep at night.

Tiki-pu looked after the blinds, and mended the paper window-panes,
which were often broken when the apprentices threw their brushes
and mahl-sticks at him. Also he strained rice-paper over the
linen-stretchers, ready for the painters to work on; and for a treat,
now and then, a lazy one would allow him to mix a colour for him. Then
it was that Tiki-pu's soul came down into his finger-tips, and his heart
beat so that he gasped for joy. Oh, the yellows and the greens, and the
lakes and the cobalts, and the purples which sprang from the blending of
them! Sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from crying out.

Tiki-pu, while he squatted and ground at the colour-powders, would
listen to his master lecturing to the students. He knew by heart the
names of all the painters and their schools, and the name of the great
leader of them all who had lived and passed from their midst more than
three hundred years ago; he knew that too, a name like the sound of the
wind, Wio-wani: the bi