Before another word could be said, 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 sent them a single shoe to mend. The new cobbler said, in scorn, they should come over and work for him. Scrub and Spare would have left the village but for their barley field, their cabbage garden, and a maid called Fairfeather, whom both the cobblers had courted for seven years without even knowing whom she meant to favour. Sometimes Fairfeather seemed to favour Scrub, sometimes she smiled on Spare; but the brothers were always friends and did not quarrel. They sowed their barley, planted their cabbage, and, now that their trade was gone, worked in the fields of some of the rich villagers to make out a scanty living. So the seasons came and passed. Spring, summer, harvest, and winter followed each other as they have always done. At the end of the winter Scrub and Spare had grown so poor and ragged that Fairfeather thought them beneath her notice. Old neighbours forgot to invite them to wedding feasts or merrymaking. They 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 gifts." Spare ran to open the door, and in came the cuckoo, carrying on one side of his bill a golden leaf larger than that of any tree in the north country; and in the other, 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 way to carry them from the end of the world. Give me a slice of 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 such a wise bird would carry the like so far." "Good Master Cobbler," cried the cuckoo, finishing the slice, "your words are more hasty than kind. If your brother is disappointed this time, I go on the same journey every year, and for your kind treatment will think it no trouble to bring each of you whichever leaf you wish." "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 once again. "This is the Feast of All Fools, and it ought to be your birthday," said Scrub. "Did ever man fling away such a chance of becoming rich! Much good your merry leaves will do when you are so poor!"