"You foolish fellow," laughed Mrs. Wren, playfully pecking him with her bill, "if you were a Goose your Goslings, in your eyes, would all be Swans. That's what I heard our landlady say to her husband last night, out on the porch, when he wondered which one of his boys would be president of the United States." Mr. Wren chuckled in a truly papa-like manner and pecked her bill in return, then fairly bubbling over with happiness flew to a neighboring limb, and burst into such a merry roundelay, one note tumbling over another in Wren fashion, that every member of the household came out to hear and see. "There he is," cried Pierre, as Mrs. Wren left her nest and flew over beside him, "with tail down and head up, singing as though he were mad with joy." "Such a rapturous song," said mamma. "It reminds me of two almost forgotten lines: 'Brown Wren, from out whose swelling throat Unstinted joys of music float.' "How well we are repaid for the litter they made, are we not?" "And sure, mum," said Bridget, whose big heart had also been touched by the sweet song, "it's glad I am, for sure, that I wasn't afther dispossessin' your tinents. It's innocent craythurs they be, God bless 'em, a harmin' ov no wan. Sthill--" "Well," queried her mistress, as Bridget paused. "Sthill, mum, I do be afther wonderin' if the tin pot had been a hangin' under the front porch instead of the back, would ye's been after takin' the litter so philosophyky like as ye have, mum, to be sure." The mistress looked at Bridget and laughingly shook her head. "That's a pretty hard nut to crack, Bridget," said she. "Under those conditions I am afraid I----" What ever admission she was going to make was cut short by a burst of laughter from the children. "Look at him, mamma, just look at him," they cried, pointing to Mr. Wren, who, too happy to keep still had flown to the gable at the extremity of the ridge-pole of the house, and after a gush of song, to express his happiness was jerking himself along the ridge-pole in a truly funny fashion. From thence he flew into the lower branches of a neighboring tree, singing and chattering, and whisking himself in and out of the foliage: then back to the roof again, and from roof to tree. "I know what makes him so happy," announced Henry, who, standing upon a chair, had peeped into the nest. "There's a dear little egg in here. Hurrah for Mrs. Wren!" "Do not touch it," commanded mamma, "but each one of us will take a peep in turn." Mrs. Wren's bead-like eyes had taken in the whole proceeding, and with fluttering wings she stood on a shrub level with the porch and gave voice to her motherly anxiety and anger. "_Dee, dee, dee_," she shrilly cried, fluttering her little wings, which in bird language means, "oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do?" Her cries of distress were heard by Mr. Wren, and with all haste he flew down beside her.