Here is a bit of rhyme in imitation of Mother Goose, which we fancy will fit very well when birds are bigger than boys and have pot-pie for dinner. Sing a song o' sixpence; A pocket full o' rye, Four and twenty little boys Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened The boys began to sing; Wasn't that a dainty dish To set before a king? [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. UMBRELLAS AND OTHER THINGS. There is more fun than you can imagine in watching the birds in your yard for just one single day. If you are a sick child and cannot go to school, the day will never seem long when once you have begun to get acquainted with these dear little people. If you look a bird straight in the eye when you have a chance to hold one in your hand, you cannot hurt him if you have a bit of a kind heart in your jacket. Birds' faces are sweet and happy and beautiful, even if they are covered with feathers. You will notice that they have different expressions at different times. But a bird's eye, whether it is black, or red, or white, will tell the story of its fear or happiness as plainly as your own. You may wonder how that can be, when there are no wrinkles to be seen about the face. We have seen birds do a great many bright things, and we have seen them do stupid things as well. There are wide cracks in our woodshed, and the towhees go through these cracks to the inside in search of something to eat, or just out of curiosity. When we open the shed door suddenly, the birds are in a great fright. They seem to have forgotten just where they came in, and they flutter about to all the cracks, trying to squeeze their way through, until they find the right one. They do this almost every day, never learning to count or to mark the crack in any way. This is very stupid of the towhees, and we laugh at their shrill squeaks, and their silly way of trying every hole without regard to their size. These towhees are full of curiosity. There is a rabbit's cage in the yard, and the birds try all day to get in. Sometimes we leave the door ajar, and in they hop. Then what a time. Squealing and fluttering, they fly about as if they were scared nearly to death. We let them out again, and they will hop to a log near by and preen themselves, and in five minutes they have forgotten what happened. Back they fly to the cage again, and are not satisfied till they find a way to get in. They wait coaxingly about the door, as if they would give anything for a ticket of admission. Once a curious little towhee squeezed itself into the owl's cage, and we had hard work to get it out alive; and then what should the stupid little thing do but go straight for the canary's cage, hanging under a tree on the lawn. If we want to hold a towhee in our hands for any reason, we have but to set a cage on the grass with the door open, and in a few minutes we have the bird.