Last night at dusk she had walked out on a bridge over a swampy creek and had seen a muskrat jump from the tall grass of the bank into the water and swim in a straight line, only the tip of his nose showing above the water, right to his house. Then she had thought only of how swiftly and quietly he had slipped away. Now she remembered that the largest part of his wild wisdom was that he had a home to get into and that he knew just where it was. And yesterday she had seen a dog chasing another dog--Jimmie said it was a woodchuck, but she had no great faith in Jimmie's wood lore. It was too universal, too impromptu and, alas! too agreeable and accomodating. The woodchuck--if Jimmie was right--had vanished suddenly in the middle of a bare, open field. He had a place to go to and he knew just where it was. Even the melancholy owls who spread pessimism through the night were probably hooting each on his own doorstep. She and Jimmie were not fitted with the instincts of these little wild things, to have a refuge always at hand against the storm that was sure to come. And she had noticed that the smaller these wild things were the better they were equipped, in their apparent helplessness, to escape danger. The little meadow bird building her nest in the open field was the very color of the grass that stood up above her. And the busy woodpecker was invisible against the bark of the tree where he worked for his living. Looking up at the suggestive strength of the hills Augusta thought how little and how unready people were in this great world that knew so well its own laws and how to take care of itself. And of all people she was sure that she and Jimmie were the least equipped, the least ready for the test of life in the swift sweeping changes that nature's order brings. A little worried frown came clouding down over the morning light in Augusta's face and a sharp little crease of trouble set itself straight down in the middle of her forehead. A new sound came now striking persistently at her attention and lifting finally, by a fresh interest, the worried frown. For many minutes she had been listening intermittently and subconsciously to what was evidently a connubial argument in a tree-top. Two birds were talking about her, or at least Augusta took the argument to herself and had been translating it idly into unconscious words while her thoughts were busy elsewhere. An energetic, housewifely voice had been complaining insistently: "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee? "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee?" And a somewhat sleepy, tolerant, patently male, voice answered back good naturedly: "Let'er _sleep_, let'er _sleep_." The colloquy had rambled intermittently into other matters, but Augusta felt guiltily sure that the energetic housewife in the treetop had an eye upon her, for every little while she brought the dialogue back to "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee? "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee?" And male laziness answered comfortably: