The sun shone brightly through the green leaves of the trees and crowned each tiny ripple on the lake with a glistening diamond. A Robin Redbreast hopped along the shore, picking up a few pebbles, for the poor thing has to wear her false teeth in her stomach, as it were, having no teeth in her head with which to chew her food. There was a rush of wings above her and she dropped the grain of sand with which she had thought to fill up her gizzard, cocked her smooth black head on one side and watched the approach of another bird. Was it friend or enemy? It proved to belong to the aristocratic family of Thrushes—real high-flyers among birds—who alighted on the same sandy shore and advanced “with many a flirt and flutter” to greet her old friend, for they had been neighbors in the same sunny orchard the year before. “So glad to meet you again, Mrs. Redbreast,” said the gracious Thrush in a most musical voice, “but are you not a long way from the willows on the river bank where I last had the pleasure of seeing you?” “Oh, we never finished that house among the willows. We became dissatisfied with the neighborhood,” answered Mrs. Redbreast, after performing the graceful courtesy of a well-bred bird, as are all Robin Redbreasts. “Ah, I was afraid of malaria when we looked the ground over together in the spring. It was too low, almost swampy. Mr. Thrush and I went to a little knoll about three miles away and built in the loveliest, the most fragrant wild crabapple tree you ever saw,” and Mrs. Thrush smoothed with shining beak a mottled feather on her handsome breast. “But would not those lovely blossoms tempt those creatures—boys, I think they are called—to climb until they found your home?” “The thorns stand sentinel and the thick leaves hide it well, and I wanted my children to grow up strong, and swift on the wing. They would never grow up well feathered and beautiful amid those lovely willows on account of the low ground,” replied the Thrush.