Grandfather Humming Bird was a good story-teller, and his wife, who was the dearest old lady Humming Bird in the world, had often advised him to write a book of his travels on the leaves of the lovely rose-laurel bush, but Grandfather Humming Bird told her that writing books of travel was too humdrum for a Humming Bird; that such work was only for that queer creature called man. Several Humming Birds then said that they felt very friendly toward man, because he loved flowers and took such pains to plant them every spring. And the Swifts, with one accord, said they were much indebted to man for his chimneys, for they made the best building places possible. "Before the white man came to this country," said grandfather Swift, "our ancestors had to build their nests in old hollow trees." "The red man was an admirer of ours," said uncle Tarsi Swift, who was an old bachelor and a little cross sometimes. "I could get along very well without the white man and his chimneys. He has driven the red man away, and cut down the grand old forests. When I was a child nothing pleased me better than to see an Indian chief, with his high moccasins trimmed with feathers. I know he trimmed them that way to make his legs look like ours." "But he could not make his feet look like yours if he tried," spoke up a pert young Humming Bird, who, with a group of others, was looking and listening in a quiet corner, and he glanced down at uncle Tarsi Swift's first toe, which was turned forwards and he counted the phalanges in uncle Tarsi's toes and compared them with his own. Three of Uncle Tarsi's toes were alike, but all of the pert Humming Bird's were different. "No," said several Swifts in chorus, "only the penguins and cormorants have toes like ours, and they are birds we seldom meet. We are glad there are so few feet exactly like ours. We can tell each other everywhere by our feet and our ten tail feathers. "I knew a swallow once who had lost two tail feathers," said one of the Swift cousins, "and he tried to pass himself off as a Swift. But he could not change his feet and so he deceived nobody. "Well, as for me," said the pert Humming Bird, "I would rather have feet that were not so peculiar as to attract everybody's attention." "Indeed," said cousin Swift, "and what do you think of having a bill three or four times as long as any of your neighbors?" "At least my bill does not open away under my eyes like yours does, cousin Swift!" Grandmamma Humming Bird knew very well that the Humming Bird family was thought to be quarrelsome by almost every one, and was very much mortified by hearing this conversation. "Children," she said, "you know it is not right to hurt people's feelings by talking about their peculiarities, and I hope none of my dear little Humming Birds will offend their Christmas guests." After this there was no more cross talk in the pert Humming Bird's corner, for all loved grandmother Humming Bird and tried to do as she wished to have them.