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Updated: April 30, 2025
For she knew that the Blindworm would do as he said. But again a brilliant thought came to her. "Nay!" she trilled gladly. "That you shall never do. I will never sleep again. I will keep awake always, night and day, with my two bright eyes ever looking out for danger. Yes, yes, yes! No one shall ever catch me napping." "You cannot help yourself," said the Blindworm. "You cannot keep awake.
For the moment, time was no object to him, and he proceeded on foot through Roehampton village and by the sodden coppices of Putney Heath to the Portsmouth high road and the railway station of East Putney. He waited at the station until an underground train snaked its way in like a giant blindworm, and went with it to the Temple and so to the quiet hotel he had chosen in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Now this was an excellent scheme, but it was not so easy to carry it out as the Nightingale had thought. For the Blindworm was very timid and kept himself carefully hidden in his burrow of soft soil, as if he half suspected the Nightingale's plans.
Day after day the Nightingale kept eager watch upon his movements, and at last, on the very eve of the wedding, when she had almost given up hope, she spied the Blindworm sound asleep on the moss under a tall tree. "Ha!" said the Nightingale to herself very softly. "Now is my chance!"
For she dares not go to sleep even for a single moment, knowing that the Blindworm is ever ready to pounce upon her and take away the eyes which she is now enjoying. Long, long ago, when the world was very young indeed, the Birds and Animals used to send their children to school, to Mother Magpie's kindergarten.
But the poor Blindworm, blind indeed from that day forth, began to cry and lament, begging the Nightingale to give him back his eye. "Nay," said the Nightingale, "did you not laugh at me when you saw me sadly sitting on the tree, mourning because I could not go to the wedding? Now I have stolen your eye, and I can see famously. But you will never again see me sitting sadly on the tree."
I touched it with my stick, when the pot-handle drew itself out of loop shape and slowly disappeared under some dead furze, showing the blunt tail of a blindworm. I have heard people say that the red ones are venomous, but the grey harmless. The red are spiteful, and if you see them in the road you should always kill them.
As for the Blindworm, it mattered very little; for he was a homely creature, content to crawl about in the dark underground, or under wood and leaves, where nobody saw him and nobody cared. But the Nightingale's case was really quite too pitiful!
Then the Blindworm grew very angry. "I will get the eye back!" he cried. "I will steal it from you, as you stole it from me, some time when you are asleep. I will climb up into your nest some night, and I will take both your eyes of which you are so proud. Then you will be blind, wholly blind as I am now." At these threatening words the Nightingale ceased to sing and became silent with fear.
It is because she dares not go to sleep on account of the Blindworm, who is waiting to catch her with her eyes closed. Once upon a time, when the world was very new, the Blindworm was not quite blind, but had one good eye. Moreover, in those days the Nightingale also had but one eye.
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