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Main > Fairy tale > All authors > Andersen Hans Christian > Fairy tale "The Neighboring Families"

The Neighboring Families

They were full, so they left the doves and exchanged opinions about them. Then they wriggled under the garden fence and, since the door to the garden room was open, one of them hopped upon the threshold. He was filled to satiety, and therefore courageous. "Twit!" he said. "I dare do this!"

"Twit!" said another. "I also dare do that, and more too!" And then he hopped into the room.

There were no people there; the third saw this, and then he flew even farther into the room, and said, "All the way in, or not at all! What a funny human nest this is! And what have they put up there? Why, what is that!"

Right in front of the sparrows bloomed the roses; they were mirrored in the pond, and the charred beams rested against the ready-to-fall chimney! Well, what was this? How did all this get in the manor parlor? And all three sparrows tried to fly over the roses and the chimney, but it was a flat wall that they flew against; it was all a painting, a large, beautiful piece of work that the artist had made from his little sketch.

"Twit!" said the sparrows. "It's nothing! It's only a likeness! Twit! That is 'the beautiful.' Can you understand it? For I can't!" And then they flew out, because people came into the room.

Now days and years went by; many times had the doves cooed, and quarreled too, the wicked birds! The sparrows had nearly frozen in winter, and lived luxuriously in summer; they were all engaged or married, or whatever one wants to call it, and those with young ones naturally thought his own were the handsomest and cleverest. One flew here and another there, and whenever they met they recognized each other by a "twit!" and three scrapes of the left leg.

The eldest of them, who was now such an old one, had no nest or young ones. She wanted so much to visit a large city, so she flew to Copenhagen.

A big house of many colors stood by the palace and the canal, where there were vessels laden with apples and pottery. It's windows were wider at the bottom than at the top; the sparrow peered inside, and each room, she thought, looked like the inside of a tulip, with all sorts of colors and decorations.

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