Mother Starling said nothing, but she did not seem any more enchanted with the prospect. "If we had only stayed in our cosy winter home down there beyond the mountains," said Daddy Starling. He was angry at his wife's not answering him, because he was so cold that he thought it might do him good to have a little fun. "But it is _your_ fault, as it was last year. You are always in such a dreadful hurry to come out to the country." "If I am in a hurry, I know the reason for it," said Mother Starling. "And you ought to be ashamed of yourself if you didn't know it also, since they are your eggs just as much as mine." "What do you mean?" said Daddy Starling, much insulted. "When have I neglected my family? Perhaps you even want me to sit in the cold and sing to you?" "Yes, I do," said Mother Starling in the tone he couldn't resist. He began to pipe at once as well as he knew how. But Mother Starling had no sooner heard the first notes than she gave him a flap with her wings and snapped at him with her beak. "Oh, please stop it!" she cried bitterly. "It sounds so sad that it makes one quite heartsick. Instead of piping like that, get the anemones to come up. I think it must be time for them. And besides, one always feels warmer when there are others freezing besides oneself." Now as soon as the anemones had heard the first piping of the starling, they cautiously stuck out their heads from the earth. But they were so tightly wrapped up in green kerchiefs that one could not get a glimpse of them. They looked like green shoots which might turn into anything. "It is too early," they whispered. "It is a shame of the starling to entice us out. One can't rely on anything in the world nowadays." Then the swallow came. "Chee! chee!" he twittered, and shot through the air on his long, tapering wings. "Out with you, you stupid flowers! Don't you see that my Lady Spring has come?" But the anemones had grown cautious. They only drew their green kerchiefs a little apart and peeped out. "One swallow does not make a summer," they said. "Where is your wife? You have only come here to see if it is possible to stay here, and you want to take us in. But we are not so stupid. We know very well that if we once catch a bad cold we are done for, for this year at any rate." [Illustration: MY LADY SPRING] "You are cowards," said the swallow, perching himself on the forest-ranger's weathercock, and peering out over the landscape. But the anemones waited still and shivered. A few of them who could not control their impatience threw off their kerchiefs in the sun. The cold at night nipped and killed them; and the story of their pitiful death was passed on from flower to flower, and caused a great consternation. And then--one delightfully mild, still night--my Lady Spring came.