"Too bad! too bad!" cried the warbler, wiping his eyes. "Young man, you will be sorry. I wouldn't have anything to do with a doctor who advised a young man to drink wine because he felt weak. Better go out in the field to work." "Ha, ha!" laughed the oriole again, amused at his own joke. "See me tap my wine bottles." Then he flew to the berry patch and sipped the red juice of the ripe raspberries, until his mouth and downy moustache were all stained, the little winebibber. "A pretty drinker you are," said the mocker; "give us a treat." Then all the other birds fell to tapping the berry bottles, till a lady came out of the house and cried, "Shoo!" flirting her gingham apron at them and rattling her tin pail against the sunflower stalks in a way that made the birds know she was in earnest. Then the lady began filling her pail, while the birds watched her from behind the leaves. "Keep still," said Mr. Robin; "she'll never see them all. There'll be plenty left. There are always more under the leaves. Let's go off to the strawberry bed." So the birds flew off to the strawberry bed on the other side of the garden, and picked the ripe red side out of ever so many of the berries. Then a man came out of the house and cried, "Shoo!" just as the lady had done. But he did not begin to pick the berries. He stuck a great ugly scarecrow up in the middle of the strawberry bed, and laughed to himself as he thought how scared the birds would be when they saw it. But the birds, sitting in the trees, laughed too, and gay old Mr. Mocker said, "He can't deceive us. We know a scarecrow from a man any day." As soon as the man's back was turned, the birds came down and chattered in the scarecrow's face, and sat on the rim of his hat, and wiped their bills on his coat sleeve, and made themselves very well acquainted with him. All the while the man in the house was saying to his daughter, "I guess those birds will let my strawberries alone now." [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII. OUR BIRDS' RESTAURANT.--MEALS AT ALL HOURS. One day in the middle of winter some one suggested that we set up a "Birds' Restaurant" out on the lawn. It was such a funny idea that we had to laugh. After we were done laughing, we went to work, while the birds watched us, as they always do, expecting some surprise. We set a rustic table under a tree by the summer-house. Then came the question, "What shall we put on it?" We imagined the birds all about were making remarks, and suggesting in an undertone, "Just what you eat, if you please." We remembered that the birds in our yard are civilized birds, and so of course we gave them civilized food.