“Why, yes!” Jolly Robin replied. “Aren’t these wings?” he asked, looking down at the boards. “They’re already spread,” he observed.
It was some minutes before Jasper Jay could answer him, for he was laughing again. But finally he managed to speak.
“Those aren’t wings!” he cried. “They’re sign-boards, to tell you which road to take. Of course, you can’t expect to read a sign when you’re sitting on it. Just go over to the fence across the road and you can see the sign that you’re on now.” 45
So Jolly Robin fluttered over to the fence. And from there he could see the sign-board plainly. This is what it looked like:
TO SKY POND, 15 MILES
“There!” Jasper Jay cried, when Jolly had read the sign aloud. “You see how easy it is. All you need do is to follow this road to which the hand points.”
“Then I shall have to fly, after all,” Jolly Robin said. He had expected to have a ride. And naturally he was disappointed. Then he read the sign once more. “Sky Pond!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want to go to Sky Pond. I want to go to the South!”
“Well, Sky Pond’s south of Pleasant Valley,” Jasper Jay explained. “It’s right on your way to your winter home. 46 And all you have to do when you reach Sky Pond will be to find another sign, which ought to say something like this: ’To the South, one thousand miles.’ You see how simple it is,” Jasper Jay remarked. “With a sign-board to guide you, you can’t go wrong.”
But it seemed to Jolly that the new way of travelling was far more difficult than the old. He said as much to Jasper Jay, too. “I wish––” he added—“I wish I had started yesterday, with the others.”
At that Jasper Jay said, “Nonsense!” And he muttered something about dunces, and mollycoddles, and—yes! ’fraid-cats!