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He had already gone some distance, when he gave a great flap! The sun shone upon his grand plumage, and his head and neck were stretched forth proudly. There was power in it, and dash! "After all, he's handsomer than any of them," said stork-mamma to herself; "but I won't tell him so." Early in that autumn the Viking came home, laden with booty, and bringing prisoners with him.
Already on the frontier of the land they had heard that Helga had caused their figures to be painted on the wall for did they not belong to her history? "That's very pretty and suggestive," said stork-papa. "But it's very little," observed stork-mamma. "They could not possibly have done less." And when Helga saw them, she rose and came on to the verandah, to stroke the backs of the storks.
Every one knows this story, but not the second; very likely because it is quite an inland story. It has been repeated from mouth to mouth, from one stork-mamma to another, for thousands of years; and each has told it better than the last; and now we mean to tell it better than all.
She believed that the moor flowers would bring healing to her sick father, and she has flown here in swan's plumage, in company with the other swan-princesses, who come to the North every year to renew their youth. She has come here, and she is gone!" "You are much too long-winded!" exclaimed the stork-mamma, "and the eggs might catch cold. I can't bear being kept in such suspense!"
"That's heavy to carry," thought the stork-papa, when he had the golden ring round his neck; "but gold and honour are not to be flung into the street. The stork brings good fortune; they'll be obliged to acknowledge that over yonder." "You lay gold and I lay eggs," said the stork-mamma.
"And our good nest would be destroyed too," said stork-mamma; "but you think less of that than of your plumage stuff and of your moor-princess. You'd best go down into the mud and stay there with her. You're a bad father to your own children, as I said already when I hatched our first brood. I only hope neither we nor our children will get an arrow in our wings through that wild girl.
"So you see," he concluded, "the princess is not dead, for she must have sent the little one up here; and now that is provided for too." "Ah, I said it would be so, from the very beginning!" said the stork-mamma; "but now think a little of your own family. Our travelling time is drawing on; sometimes I feel quite restless in my wings already.
"We will not wait for the swans," said stork-mamma: "if they want to go with us they had better come. We can't sit here till the plovers start. It is a fine thing, after all, to travel in this way, in families, not like the finches and partridges, where the male and female birds fly in separate bodies, which appears to me a very unbecoming thing. What are yonder swans flapping their wings for?"
Meanwhile, the stork-papa told the story to his family in his own way; but not till they had eaten and were satisfied; otherwise they would have had something else to do than to listen to stories. "Well," said the stork-mamma, when she had heard it, "you will be made something of at last; I suppose they can do nothing less."
That is what they all said, and the learned men said it was very cleverly and beautifully spoken. "That is a beautiful thought!" stork-papa said immediately. "I don't quite understand it," stork-mamma replied: "and that's not my fault, but the fault of the thought. But let it be as it will, I've something else to think of."
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