Once upon a time in a lovely field all full of flowers and such sweet little singing birds, and a nice cool breeze blowing, there lived a hedgehog with a very kind heart. He was very shy and sensitive, so thought as nobody had before any use for him all his life long. He was very gentle, and tried in every way to please all his friends.
Now the hedgehog’s name was Henry, and this was how he lived quite alone, with nobody ever to help him or talk to him. And what do you think happened one spring day as he was strolling along and thinking how very happy he might be if he only had a little friend? Why, just as he turned his head round the corner of the hedge, he saw a little bird standing there trembling all over, because he was so hungry.
Then Henry’s kind heart decided that he would try, at any rate, to make a friend that day. So he said to the bird: “Little sparrow, why do you cry?”
“Tweeter, tweeter” (that was his language), “I have looked all over the whole world,” and he turned his little head in every direction. “I have looked all over and I cannot find one single crumb of bread.”
So Henry at once began to search in all his pockets, for he always kept a little bundle of nice food for himself, and then he thought it would be so nice if he shared it with somebody. He searched first in one side, then he searched in the other, but he could not find anything at all: so full were his pockets of jam and honey; for you must know he had made it from the most lovely spring flowers.
Then he thought he would unpack one of his lovely dinners that he always took with him, and so he soon opened it. “Here, he said, “little sparrow; there is cheese and apple tart and hard-boiled egg; the cake is a little crumbly and perhaps it’s a little crumbly and perhaps a little hard, but all the same I think you will find it very good, as it was made by my mother.”
The little bird trembled with joy, and stretched out his little beak to get a bit of apple tart, but all the hedgehog’s spines were poking up in such a way that after all the poor sparrow could not reach it, and at last he had to say good-day and fly away. But Henry felt very sad indeed.
“Cheer up, cheer up,” sang a tiny voice, but Henry was leaning so low upon the ground from his own clumsy feelings that he quite forgot to look up. At last he did give a glance, and who should it be but the little wren.
“Oh dear, dear; I forgot it was you,” cried Henry.
And so the little bird sat on the ground and tried with all his might to search through all Henry’s lovely dinner-basket. And the hedgehog laid down on the ground by him, and urged him on with all his power, telling him where the best things were to be found, and reporting from time to time on the amount that had been accomplished; so that at last almighty Hunger was satisfied, and three-quarters of Henry’s dinner-basket was empty.
“Never mind,” said Henry most cheerily; “I can always get some more food. I shall soon find a fruit tree, and I know there are bushes full of blackberries quite near. And if I can’t find anything there, I will just scratch in the ground. Only one thing couldn’t you do, dear little wren, and that is to tell me exactly how long you are going to stay with me.”
“I shall stay with you all the summer long,” said the wren—a good five months. So in that case, said Henry most delightedly, “We shall get to know each other quite well as Brothers, and it shall be said to you in your sleep tonight, as there is nobody else to say it.” So another word or two of joy was exchanged, and the little wren flew on a few paces till he came to some head-height daisies, where he had a thought every now and then, that a fine feather cloak would look very nice after all about that thorn-cock. And this was the first friendship that ever occurred in the whole wide world.