CHAPTER XXVI

TO SING BEFORE THE QUEEN

“Sir Fly hangs dead on the window-pane;

The frost doth wind his shroud;

Through the halls of his little summer house
The north wind cries aloud.

We will bury his bones in the mouldy wall,
And mourn for the noble slain:

A southerly wind and a sunny sky—
Buzz! up he comes again‘

Oh, Master Fly!”

ICK looked up from the music-rack and shivered.

He had forgotten the fire in studying his song, and

the blackened ends of the burnt-out logs lay smouldering

on the hearth. The draught, too, whistled shrilly under

the door, in spite of the rushes that he had piled along the
crack,

The fog had been gone for a week. It was snapping
cold ; and through the peep-holes he had thawed upon the
window-pane with his breath, he could see the hoar-frost
lying in the shadow of the wall in the court below.

How forlorn the green old dial looked out there alone
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