I think Mother Magpie must have told the story to her children, chuckling over the greedy fellow's failure. And they told it to the children of sunny France, from whom I got the tale for you. So now you know why the Blackbird looks so solemn and so sulky in his suit of rusty black; and why his nerves are so weak that if one suddenly surprises him, picking up seeds in the field, he gives a terrible scream of fright. For he thinks one is that dreadful dragon-creature who chased him and so nearly gobbled him on that unlucky day, long ago.
Poor Brother Blackbird! Don't let him know I told you all this; it would make him so very much ashamed.
One day Madame Fox, who was strolling along under the hedge, heard a Blackbird trilling on a branch. Quick as thought she jumped and seized the little fellow, and was about to gobble him down then and there. But the Blackbird began to chirp piteously:--
"Oh, oh, Madame Fox! What are you thinking of? Just see, I am such a tiny mouthful! And when I am gone--I am gone. Only let me free and I will tell you something. Look! Here come some peasant women with eggs and cheese which they are carrying to the market at Verrières. That would be a meal worth having! Only let me go, and I will help you, Master Fox."
The Fox saw that this might be a good plan which the bird proposed, so she let him go.
And what do you think the Blackbird did? He began to hop, hop, hop toward the women, dragging his wing behind him as if it were broken, which is a trick some birds know very well.
"Look!" cried one of the women, when she caught sight of him. "Oh, look at the little Blackbird there! His wing is broken and he cannot fly. I shall try to catch him." And she ran as fast as she could, making her hands into a little cage to put over him. The other women, too, set down their baskets, for convenience--set them down right in the middle of the road--and joined the chase after the poor little Blackbird, so lame, so lame! But always, as they came close to him, he managed to flutter out of reach.
Meanwhile, Madame Fox went round about by the hedge and came all quietly and unseen to the place where the baskets waited in the road. And oh! what a good dinner she found there; chickens and eggs and fresh cheese nicely done up for the market. And the greedy old lady ate them all--all the chickens and the eggs and the cheeses. My! How fat she was when all was done.