Page:The pilgrim's progress by John Bunyan every child can read (1909).djvu/259

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INTERPRETER'S ALLEGORIES
243

objecting, she suffereth her skin to be pulled over her ears. Your King doth call you His sheep."

After this, he led them into his garden, where was great variety of flowers; and he said, "Do you see all these?" So Christiana said, "Yes." Then said he again, "Behold, the flowers are diverse in stature, in quality, and color, and smell, and virtue, and some are better than others; also, where the gardener has set them, there they stand, and quarrel not one with another."

Again, he had them into his field, which he had sowed with wheat and corn; but when they beheld, the tops of all were cut off, and only the straw remained. He said again, "This ground was made rich, and was ploughed, and sowed; but what shall we do with the crop?" Then said Christiana, "Burn some, and make muck of the rest." Then said the Interpreter again, "Fruit, you see, is that thing you look for; and, for want of that, you send it to the fire, and to be trodden under foot of men. Beware that in this you condemn not yourselves."

Then, as they were coming in from abroad, they espied a little robin with a great spider in his mouth. So the Interpreter said, "Look here." So they looked, and Mercy wondered; but Christiana said, "What a disparagement is it to such a pretty little bird as the robin-redbreast is; he being also a bird above many, that loveth to maintain a kind of sociableness with man! I had thought they had lived upon crumbs of bread, or