She was a very wise bird, and knew far too much to say, "I told you so."
Saying that, you know, always makes things go wrong. She looked at the
rail fence, ran along the top of it, toeing in prettily as she ran,
looked around in a surprised way, and said, "Oh, _that_ place?"
"Yes, Mrs. Robin," said her husband, "_that_ place. Do you see anything
wrong about it?"
"No-o," she said. "I think I could make it do."
Before long another nest was half built, and Mrs. Robin was working away
in the happiest manner possible, stopping every little while to sing her
afternoon song: "Do you think what you do? Do you think what you do? Do
you thi-ink?"
Mr. Robin was also at work, and such billfuls of mud, such fine little
twigs, and such big wisps of dry grass as went into that home! Once Mr.
Robin was gone a long time, and when he came back he had a beautiful
piece of white cotton string dangling from his beak. That they put on
the outside. "Not that we care to show off," said they, "but somehow
that seemed to be the best place to put it."
Mr. Robin was very proud of his nest and of his wife. He never went far
away if he could help it. Once she heard him tell Mr. Goldfinch that,
"Mrs. Robin was very sweet about building where he chose, and that even
after he insisted on changing places from the tree to the fence she was
perfectly good-natured."
"Yes," said Mrs. Robin to Mrs. Goldfinch, "I was perfectly
good-natured." Then she gave a happy, chirpy little laugh, and Mrs.
Goldfinch laughed, too. They were perfectly contented birds, even if
they didn't wear the brightest breast feathers or insist on having
their own way. And Mrs. Robin had been married before.
[Illustration]
THE SELFISH TENT-CATERPILLAR.
One could hardly call the Tent-Caterpillars meadow people, for they did
not often leave their trees to crawl upon the ground. Yet the Apple-Tree
Tent-Caterpillars would not allow anybody to call them forest people.
"We live on apple and wild cherry trees," they said, "and you will
almost always find us in the orchards or on the roadside trees. There
are Forest Tent-Caterpillars, but please don't get us mixed with them.
We belong to another branch of the family, the Apple-Tree branch."
The Tree Frog said that he remembered perfectly well when the eggs were
laid on the wild cherry tree on the edge of the meadow. "It was early
last summer," he said, "and the Moth who laid them was a very agreeable
reddish-brown person, about as large as a common Yellow Butterfly. I
remember that she had two light yellow lines on each forewing. Another
Moth came with her, but did not stay. He was smaller than she, and had
the same markings. After he had gone, she asked me if we were ever
visited by the Yellow-Billed Cuckoos."
"Why did she ask that?" said the Garter Snake.
"Don't you know?" exclaimed the Tree Frog. And then he whispered
something to the Garter Snake.
The Garter Snake wriggled with surprise and cried, "Really?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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