“At last, when the birds were old enough to be taught to fly, an event occurred which threw Mrs. Robin into a wild state of excitement. I had several times heard my mistress and the cook talking together of some people who were coming to spend a portion of the summer, and I had caught the names of Florence and Johnnie, but who Florence and Johnnie were I did not know or particularly care, for it mattered little to me who came or went. I was never molested, and my daily wants were supplied with great regularity. And still I did have some little curiosity with regard to the expected guests, on whose account the whole household was, for a few days, in an unusual commotion. On the afternoon when they arrived my cage was hanging in a little archway at the rear of the grounds, and so I heard and saw nothing until Robin, who had been absent for a few hours, came home, and stopped for a moment on a shrub near me to rest and chat awhile, as he was in the habit of doing. In fact, I had sometimes thought that Mrs. Robin, whom, since the birth of the birds, he had called little Motherdy, while she in return had called him Fatherdy, was more than half jealous of me because of Robin’s sociability. At all events he never sat near me long before she joined him and made some excuse to get him away. So I was not surprised to see her flying toward us from the cherry-tree, where she had been pecking away at a half-ripe cherry. As she came near I saw at a glance that something was the matter, and so did Robin, and he called out in his cheery, teasing way: “‘Well, little Motherdy, what’s up now, that your feathers seem so ruffled, and you so excited? Anything happened to the young ones, or what is the matter?’ “‘Matter!’ she repeated. ‘Matter enough. What do you think has come right into our midst to worry our birds to death?’ “‘Cats, maybe,’ he said; and she replied: “‘Cats! No, something worse than that. Two children, boy and girl, and by the looks of the luggage they have come to stay, and there’s an end of all peace for us. Why, the boy has already spied me, and actually thought he could reach me, and I on the top of the Brockway house. You would far better have put our nest in the evergreens across the street, where I wanted it. But no, you must stay in that old place just because you used to live there with the other one, who I wish was here now. Such a time as I am going to have with those children! Afraid for my life and the babies every minute!’