With characteristic energy, he frequently begins to carry twigs into the house before he finds a mate. The day little Jenny Wren appears on the scene, how he does sing! Dashing off for more twigs, but stopping to sing to her every other minute, he helps furnish the cottage quickly, but, of course, he overdoes--he carries in more twigs and hay and feathers than the little house can hold, then pulls half of them out again. Jenny gathers too, for she is a bustling housewife and arranges matters with neatness and despatch. Neither vermin nor dirt will she tolerate within her well-kept home. Everything she does to suit herself pleases her ardent little lover. He applauds her with song; he flies about after her with a nervous desire to protect; he seems beside himself with happiness. Let any one pass too near his best beloved, and he begins to chatter excitedly: _"Chit-chit-chit-chit"_ as much as to say, "Oh, do go away; go quickly! Can't you see how nervous and fidgety you make me?" If you fancy that Jenny Wren, who is patiently sitting on the little pinkish chocolate spotted eggs in the centre of her feather bed, is a demure, angelic creature, you have never seen her attack the sparrow, nearly twice her size, that dares put his impudent head inside her door. Oh, how she flies at him! How she chatters and scolds! What a plucky little shrew she is, after all! Her piercing, chattering, {36} scolding notes are fairly hissed into his ears until he is thankful enough to escape. THE LITTLE BROWN WREN From "Boy's Book of Rhyme," by Clinton Scollard There's a little brown wren that has built in our tree, And she's scarcely as big as a big bumble-bee; She has hollowed a house in the heart of a limb, And made the walls tidy and made the floors trim With the down of the crow's foot, with tow, and with straw The cosiest dwelling that ever you saw. This little brown wren has the brightest of eyes And a foot of a very diminutive size. Her tail is as trig as the sail of a ship. She's demure, though she walks with a hop and a skip; And her voice--but a flute were more fit than a pen To tell of the voice of the little brown wren. One morning Sir Sparrow came sauntering by And cast on the wren's house an envious eye; With a strut of bravado and toss of his head, "I'll put in my claim here," the bold fellow said; So straightway he mounted on impudent wing, And entered the door without pausing to ring. An instant--and swiftly that feathery knight All towsled and tumbled, in terror took flight, While there by the door on her favourite perch, As neat as a lady just starting for church. With this song on her lips, "He will not call again Unless he is asked," sat the little brown wren.