Once upon a time, at the very edge of the woods, there lived a little owl named Oliver. The little owl, Oliver, was curious about everything. He was curious about the animals and birds that came to visit him, and he was curious about the woods in which he lived. Most of all, he was curious to find out what lay beyond the woods.
Day after day he would sit in a tall tree and listen to the news that the birds brought him from over the mountains and faraway lands. But he would never believe what they told him, for it seemed too strange and wonderful. Once he heard an old crow croaking that he had flown for a whole month over the sea without finding anywhere to rest.
This seemed bad enough, but when all the other birds came home for the summer and told how on their way they had found green fields and beautiful flowers and enormous trees, Oliver almost lost his senses. Green fields and enormous trees! Whatever did they mean? He had never seen anything but the little green patch just below the big tree in which he lived. So they all thought him very stupid for not understanding, but he was only a little owl, and little owls cannot be expected to know much!
Now one lovely morning, early in spring, as he was being washed and brushed before breakfast, he heard one of the birds say to another, “Dewdrops are lovely to-day.” He wondered very much what dewdrops could be, and whether he might eat them for breakfast, so he put in a question.
“They are pearls, my dear, pearls,” said the bird.
“Oh, how I should like to live in a cellar where there were pearls growing on the roof!” cried Oliver.
“You would not find them pee-pee worth picking,” said the bird. “They are pancakes and ice puddings and strawberry creams. We should all be wretched if we had to eat pearls.”
But by this time Oliver’s head was quite turned and he could not think of anything but the wonderful things that the birds brought him from foreign parts. Fancy eating pancakes and strawberry creams! Such things were never heard of in the bleak woods where he lived.
As soon as he was quick-brained enough to do so, he said to his parents, his brothers, and his sisters, “Please, can I go over the sea and see the wonderful places where the birds live, and the curious things that grow there?”
So off Oliver started on his travels. He flew on and on, till the woods were far behind him and the house-tops lay below him. But still he felt quite certain, as he flew over the blank monotony of rocks and snow, that wonderful green fields were lying hidden underneath, and that he would come upon forests blooming with flowers where thick grasses might be growing.
At last one day, when the sun was very low blinking in his eyes, he came to a large shining surface that sparkled in the sun, and there, just where he landed, was a great forest where the trees were bending before the wind, as if flowers or other trees were moving about among them.
He had come to the sea at last. Up and down he flew just over the edge where the peaks of the billows stood out from the bottom of the sea and the crests fell back into it. He flew on shore and off shore, he flew this way and that way, in every direction, till his heart was quite content, and then he quietly perched upon a rock and began reflecting on what he should do next.
It did not take him long to find out a good plan, for he was a very clever little owl. “What is the matter with me is,” said he, “that I know how to do a great deal; only I don’t know how to do it! What a pity it is!” By this he meant the wonderful things that animals could do, such as whisking their tails, and growing big or little at will, and shining in the dark. “True, if every creature knew what he could do people would grow so jealous of one another, and think it so bad to be rich in talents, that nothing would be so popular. The wise ones would be wise as wise ones always are, another kind of animal would be discovered which would be still cleverer. But animals are too happy to go on in ignorance, and they don’t want to know, for fear of becoming unhappy. Accepted talents are just like money, a little bit always draws a little bit after it.”
He then calmly continued on for so much and so long winter, that nature herself bade him return home.
He spread out his wings, and with the help of a stiff gale and the east wind blew all the way home without a rest. The sun was shining again, the blooms were again budding, and the quails began mating in the fields. It was past dew-drop time, but pancakes were still to be seen the whole day long.
“But what?” said Oliver one day quite well entertained, and looking over his nose from right to left. “What is this? Is it really and truly true, or are my eyes deceive me? But they are not deceiving me! It is a beautiful secret garden!”
And sure enough, it was a secret garden! And sorry was he when just before sunset he had to turn back to his own house.
To remain in the secret garden he knew not which way to turn, first one way and then the other, something might happen, and so had he dominion over the whole place?
Very dreary grew the following winter, for Oliver’s family had now begun to forget that there were such things as wonderful green fields and gardens. He only thought of these pleasures, and sought for these things in vain.
But his family had their winter amusements, and when spring returned, off they started to neighbouring countries whose wondrous wonders were known to them.
But thought no more of the sea and its wonders now lay buried in the land of dreams. Flying out on wing one day, he suddenly felt frightened, for to the very bottom of the sea lay a dark blue door. Over this door there was but one other that went a little way into the wood, and over that again he knew not how far off was the door of his own tree!
Very sad and sorrowful he was when he knew that he could never find the way to his secret garden. But he was wrong! Once more it blazed up in all its beauty! The blue gate flew open, a strong person in it welcomed him; it even built him a little room in one of the tree tops, and the floods of the wood were like eyes of which however much you bedewed them they were always bedewed and kinder still!
Does not Oliver owe all this to dewdrops being so plentiful to him one spring morning?