So away the two brown-winged companions sped, I know not exactly where. But, though both in a great hurry to get home, they judiciously deemed, as I have just observed, that they might do a trifle of purveying business on the way, by picking up a few seeds; or if a manageable slug or grub presented itself, so much the better. I had not the curiosity to follow them; but I believe they each contrived to carry home a dainty supper; the one to the hole of a big ash-tree, the other to its nest in the furrow beside some tufts of golden gorse. It may be interesting, however, to know, by way of completing their domestic history, that both had promising young households--the one of three, and the other of four--to support; and the wee downy children had arrived too at a very ravenous age, with any capacity for food, which indeed amounted, at times, on the part alike of father and mother, to a trial of temper. The Nightingale, now left all alone for the discharge of a somewhat novel duty, seemed at first to feel his responsibility: perhaps a feeling allied to nervousness in the human being. But he was a knowing little fellow too; and resolved to proceed in the most alluring as well as discreet way to his task. Being fully acquainted with the position of the rose-leaf, he took wing, and settled himself on the branch of a birch close by. Without any possible warning, he forthwith began (it was the best way of getting over these nervous sensations) to pipe one of his very best and most enchanting songs. He had somewhat unwarrantably indulged the expectation that he would get an immediate response from the Dewdrop. He had however, in this, to exercise the virtue of patience. [Illustration] "Answer me, pretty Dewdrop," he said in his most bewitching trill. But the Dewdrop was silent. It appeared to pay not the slightest attention. Another chirrup and mellifluous note, and then, coming to a lower and still nearer spray of the birch-tree, quite within whispering distance: "Pretty little noiseless thing," continued the Nightingale, "what are you? Where were you born? Have you any father or mother? or are you an orphan? My two brother birds spoke of your brightness and lustre. My eyes are tolerably good; but I confess I can see none of these things about you; you seem rather somehow to appear sad, though I trust I am wrong." "I have reason to be sad," at last replied the Dewdrop, in the quietest, mildest, silveriest voice imaginable, and trembling with an emotion real or pretended. "You call me a Dewdrop, but in truth I am not, I am a teardrop; a teardrop which fell from the sky." "A teardrop from the sky!" said the Nightingale, in undisguised astonishment. "I cannot comprehend you. Pray tell me what you mean?"