The young ones, who still had plenty of life and hope in them, and hardly knew what it was to be in peril of their lives, soon broke up into different divisions, and started different ways, but all in a southward direction. Each company had its leader, and there was much rivalry as to which should belong to the company which was led by a handsome and lively bird named Cocktail, to whom they all looked up. But Cocktail would not have more than three with him; and Cocktail was wont to have his own way. He chose his great friend Feltie[1] and two others, Jack and Jill; and off they went with a loud and hearty good-bye; the other three quite confident in Cocktail’s prudence, skill, and courage. He was nearly two years old; he had had a nest and family last summer in a Norwegian pine-forest; he had attacked a magpie that was threatening his young, and beaten it away in disgrace; he had led a large party across the Northern Sea last autumn to England, and had found them all a breakfast within an hour of landing. Whatever he did was sure to be right, and wherever he went there was sure to be food. He was well aware of all his virtues, and liked, in a cheerful and pleasant way, to be made much of; and he had taken young Feltie under his protection from their first acquaintance, because Feltie had very soon made it plain that in his honest eyes there was no such bird as Cocktail to be found in the whole world. Jill was chosen because she was a young hen-bird of a mild and yielding disposition, yet of pleasant manners and ladylike ways; and to say the truth, during these sunny days of late, Cocktail had cast an approving eye upon her, and had half made up his mind to select her as his partner for the coming spring and summer--provided of course that no one with superior charms should meet his eye in the meantime. As for her own choice in the matter, that never entered into his calculations. Lastly, Jack was the brother of Jill, and very fond of her--which is not usually the case with brothers and sisters among the fieldfares; and on this account he was allowed to join the party. “We must have one more,” Cocktail had said before they started, “and it really doesn’t much matter who it is provided he will follow me and do what I tell him. No swaggerers here, please; I want some one who’s nobody in particular!” “Oh, if you wouldn’t mind, Cocktail,” said Jill humbly, “I don’t think Jack is any one in particular, mayn’t he come?” “Let him come forward,” said Cocktail magnificently; “let me see him. Here, you Jack, are you any one in particular?” Jack declared that he was no one but himself, and therefore could not be any one _in particular_, like Cocktail; and on the strength of this he was admitted to the little company.