The tale of the beautiful egg

Once a little girl was given a beautiful egg by her grandfather who was an artist; an egg painted by him with elegant flowers of all colours and intricate patterns of gold and silver.
And she loved the egg so much, it was like a treasure to her and, because she treasured it, she kept it upon a cushion of red velvet so that it would never get broken.
"Oh beautiful egg", she would say to the egg as she cradled it, "How lovely you are. I'm sure there is not an egg in all the world like you".
Sometimes she would even bring her friends to her house to show them the egg although she would never let them touch it for fear one of them might accidentally break it.
One day, however, when the girl came back from playing, she found the egg lying, shattered, on the ground.
"Oh no! Oh no!", she said, sobbing, "My beautiful egg is broken".
And, crying, she ran to her grandfather carrying the pieces of the egg in her hands and said,
"Look, grandfather. My beautiful egg is broken. Please fix it".
"But I can't fix it", said her grandfather.
"Oh but you must", said the little girl, weeping tears over the broken pieces,  "It was my treasure and now it is broken and I've lost it".
Her grandfather smiled.
"But granddaughter", he said, "The egg is only broken because the chick that was in it has hatched out".
"It has?", asked the little girl, amazed.
"Yes", said her grandfather, "And that chick will now grow up to be a bird with bright feathers and a golden song even more beautiful than its painted egg. So you see, it is not a sad thing that your egg has broken, it is a reason for joy".
And just as the girls grandfather had said, the little chick did grow up to be a beautiful bird all covered in long colourful feathers and with a golden song and when that happened the girl forgot all about her painted egg because, in the bird, she had discovered something much more precious.