At this moment Mrs. Waddles coming round the house corner flushed Bob, and he rose with the whirring of wings that is one of the eery sounds of the autumn lanes every year before grouse, quail, and woodcock have grown too gun shy, and, going over the garden house, disappeared in the long grass. But he came again and took home a report of the good eating, for one summer morning a little after dawn, when Anne was sitting on the foot of her bed and looking out of her window, she saw what she at first took to be Tommy’s banty hen leading a large brood of chicks down the garden path. Rubbing her sleepy eyes, she leaned out of the window and saw that they were not the bantams, but Mamma Quail and the children out for a breakfast walk. Anne hurried down as quickly as she could, but Waddles cheered so loudly, thinking that she was also going for a walk, that the party disappeared in the quince bushes before she could steal up to them. It had rained in the night, and their chicken-like footprints in the fine moist gravel by the empty dog dishes told her that they had breakfasted there. In autumn the jays always came slyly to the oaks and beeches at Happy Hall and carried away nuts and acorns for winter use, storing some in a hollow chestnut in the pasture, and others under the shingles of the old cow barn. When the resting season came, however, they usually stole away to the pine woods across the river, as Anne’s father did not encourage them about the garden; for whether or not they are always unneighbourly egg thieves, it is certain they carry terror to the gentler hearts of Birdland, and at Happy Hall nothing might stay that could annoy the wood thrushes and brown thrashers that returned season after season. What was Anne’s surprise then one June morning, to see in the orchard unmistakable flashes of “jay blue,” which is a colour by itself, and not to be mistaken by the owner of the Magic Spectacles for the colour of either bluebird, indigo-bird, king-fisher, or heron. Next she heard the jay’s bell note, not the harsh jeering “jay-jay” of alarm, but the spring call, like the striking together of well-tempered bits of metal. Then came a chorus of alarm cries from all the birds of the neighbourhood, and a commotion in the trees over the garden house. As Anne was going out to see what was the matter, a flash of blue crossed the sunlight and landed on the walk, and there was Tchin-dees the blue jay himself, in flawless bravery of feathers. He put his head on one side and peered here and there saucily, as much as to say: “Where is your old dog bread, anyway? Stingy this morning, aren’t you? Yes, I’ve been here before, you can’t fool me. I know it’s after breakfast time.” [Illustration] The dog dishes were not in sight, and there appeared to be no scraps upon the ground, but Tchin-dees was not daunted. In the nursery kennel slept Jack and Jill, stretched out as flat as if they were cookie dogs.