“It is a Song Sparrow,” said Gray Lady, “and you are right in saying it stays with us almost all the year.” “Now,” called Tommy, “the birds are beginning to come out; some Barn Swallows are flying over the low meadow and there’s a lot of ’em, and another kind strung along the wires on the turnpike. They always sit close and act that way all this month and some fly away, and ’long the first part of next month, when the corn’s all husked, they’ll be gone! Please, ma’am, why do some birds never go away, and some do, and what makes ’em come back?” Then Tommy began one of the volley of questions that Miss Wilde so dreaded. “Yes, an’ please, ma’am,” asked Dave, “why are some birds that mate together such different colours?” “An’ what becomes of Bobolinks after Fourth of July?” asked another. “An’ what makes birds have so many kind of feet?” queried a third. Then questions flew so thick and fast that Gray Lady could not even hear herself think, and presently, when every one had laughed at the confusion, order was restored. “I asked you a moment ago what you would like to hear about. I think I know. You would like to hear about birds! Are there any other boys here besides Tommy and Dave who care about birds?” asked Gray Lady, who wished to have each child feel that he or she had a part in what was going on. “I know about birds’ eggs!” cried Bobby Bates, a boy who, from being undersized, looked much younger than he really was; “I’ve got a pint fruit-jar of robins’ eggs.” “But I’ve got a quart jar of mixed eggs,” said Dave, “and they’re mostly little ones, Wrens and Chippy birds and such like, so’s I’ve really got more’n Bobby!” he added boastfully. Gray Lady opened her lips to speak sharply and her eyes flashed, for nest-robbing was one of the things she most detested. Then she remembered that perhaps these children had not only never even dreamed that there was any harm in it, but had never heard of the laws that wise people had made to protect the eggs of wild birds, as well as the birds themselves, from harm. So she hesitated a moment while she thought how she might best make the matter understood. “Why do you like to collect eggs?” she asked. “Because they are pretty?” “Yes’m, partly,” drawled Dave, “and then to see how many I can get in a spring.” “But do you never think how you worry the mother birds by stealing their eggs, and how many more birds there would be if you let the eggs hatch out? What the rhyme says is true,— “‘The blue eggs in the Robin’s nest Will soon have beak and wings and breast, And flutter and fly away!’ Only think, if all those robins’ eggs of yours, Bobby, and all your little eggs, Dave, should suddenly turn into birds and fly about the room, how many there would be! But now they will never have wings and swell their throats to sing to us and use their beaks to eat up insects that make the apples wormy and curl up the leaves of the great shade trees.”