And when the blackbirds begin the robins rather leave off: for the robins are like a lot more, they want to have it all to themselves all the time; only they just can't. So they sulk instead. Then Spring came, and jolly began. And Baby always said she liked Spring best, because of as before. And the sky became a song, and the earth a garden. And the robins went into the woods; and the swallows came out of the ponds; and the larks ran up the sky; and everybody was glad. And the sap rose everywhere, and rather got into mannikin's head; and he became so dreadfully excited that at last Baby took Tiny down to see him, because she was afraid his poor little brain was going. So they came to the hole, and looked in. And there was mannikin standing on the knife-board, and plugging the blacking-bottles on to the bricks. And when Tiny said "Why?" Mannikin sucked his thumb and answered, "Becob I like to see the ink splosh so." Then Tiny, who loved lecturing better than anything else in the world, took the blacking-bottles away from him, and told him he was only making it worse for himself, and the badder he behaved the longer he'd be there, and how the King was very strict, although he was so good and kind. But Mannikin didn't seem to mind, and strutted up and down the boot-hole, with his hands in his pockets, singing, "I'm the cock of the boot-hole! I'm the cock of the boot-hole! See me! See me! I'm the cock of the boot-hole!" 37 And after that May and June came. And there were tad-poles in the ponds, and lilacs with purple plumes, and chestnuts with white ones, and cuckoos calling and little flop-birds that tried to fly, and tumbled on the lawn instead. And everything was jolly all around. And Tiny played cricket in the Fort in the Hole, while Baby sat on the wall with the Fellows, and watched him, and afterwards wrote round, _Tiny played four balls, and hit one. The next bowled him, and the Junior Subaltern umpired him out. So that wasn't so bad--for us, was it!_ And every day when the Regiment went out to War, after the first pellet, the Colonel fell out, because he said he'd be a casualty now, and let the other Fellows have a go, which Tiny always took to mean him. And the Colonel ran away bent up double behind the wild cherry-hedge till he came where Baby was waiting him under the laburnum at the little gate into her garden. And when she had let him in, they ran hand in hand to the elm, where there was a great bowl of milk and a cabbage-leaf of strawberries ready. Then the dear old Colonel took off his shako, and was quite quite bald. And he sat on a little stool among the elm-roots, and drank the milk, and ate the strawberries, while Baby leaned up against the elm with her feet straight before her, and read him a story of a naughty pussy-kitten out of a great picture-book. And that pleased the Colonel so that he lifted himself on his hands and swung to and fro, chuckling.