The swallow and the starling were not far behind it. They were all our tenants and lived under our roof, or on it, but the stork was the only one who paid rent formally. Payment was made in kind. Every other year he threw an egg out of the nest, and the next year a fledgling stork. For the rest he held aloof, disdaining haughtily to hold communication of any kind with us. Even when a disabled stork became, by force of circumstances, a member of the household, residing in the hen-house through the winter, he never grew familiar, but accepted what was given to him with quiet reserve as from a subject people; which, of course, was his right, seeing that he was a public functionary of the first importance. We had no stork on our house, but both our neighbors did, and as if to make up for the apparent slight, he was a regular visitor in our family. They seemed to always know when he was coming, and when I was told of it, I never failed to leave a Tvebak for him in the window which the nurse had left open so that he should not wake up the whole house by rapping on the pane with his bill. And when it was gone in the morning, I knew that a little brother had come to join our company; and sure enough it was so. The swallow sang for us, and we saw to it that his way out and in of the hallway where he built his nest was free, by leaving a pane out of the transom. If by any chance that was obstructed, we knew it by his flying up and down before the doorway, waiting anxiously for some one to open it, that he might slip in where a string of little round heads, always set in a straight row, were clamoring with wide-open bills for flies and gnats. When the starling sang his evening song in the big poplar, the Old Town was white with the bloom of the elder. He left it dyed a deep purple, for he was as fond of elderberries as we were of the soup our mothers made of them, and the stain of them abides. In between the blossoming and the berrying when his youngsters were grown, he took himself off with his wife for several weeks, leaving only the children behind. To France, it was said, he went, and to Mediterranean olive groves, where they hunted him as a nuisance. We loved him and gave him sanctuary. And he helped the farmer in turn by ridding his field of pests. Where a flock of starlings settled down for luncheon, no wriggling thing remained to tell the tale.