up their heads and giggled,
as the young do when one of their number misbehaves.

"Don't make that noise!" said his mother; "it's not decent!"

"It's low!" said the father-bird.

The littlest young Jackdaw was overwhelmed with astonishment. When he
tried to explain, his unseemly melodies led to his immediate expulsion
from the family circle. Such noises, he was told, could only be made in
private; when he had quite got over them he might come back,--but not
until.

He never got over them; so he never came back. For a few days he hid
himself in different trees of the garden, and sang the praises of
sorrow; but his family, though they comprehended him not, recognised his
note, and came searching him with beak and claw, and drove him out so as
not to have him near them committing such scandalous noises to the ears
of the public.

"He lies in his throat!" said the old Jackdaw. "Everything he says he
garbles. If he is our son he must have been hatched on the wrong side of
the nest!"

After that, wherever he went, all the birds jeered at and persecuted
him. Even the nightingales would not listen to his brotherly voice. They
made fun of his black coat, and called him a Nonconformist without a
conscience. "All this has come about," thought he, "because God never
meant anything beautiful to come true."

One day a man who saw him and heard him singing, caught him, and took
him round the world in a cage for show. The value of him was discovered.
Great crowds came to see the little Jackdaw, and to hear him sing.
He was described now as the "Amphabulous Philomel, or the
Mongrel-Minstrel"; but it gave him no joy.

Before long he had become what we call tame--that is to say, his wings
had been clipped; he was allowed out of his cage, because he could no
longer fly away, and he sang when he was told, because he was whipped if
he did not.

One day there was a great crowd round the travelling booth where he was
on view: the showman had a new wonder which he was about to show to the
people. He took the little Jackdaw out of his cage, and set him to perch
upon his shoulder, while he busied himself over something which he was
taking carefully out of ever so many boxes and coverings.

The Jackdaw's sad eye became attracted by a splendid scarf-pin that the
showman wore--a gold pin set with a tiny emerald that burned like fire.
The bird thought, "Now if only the beautiful could become true!"

And now the showman began holding up