However, he managed to find food enough so that he continued to grow rapidly. The night after he found a mountain ash on a hillside, full of bright red berries, his father said that he seemed much taller than he had been that morning.
“You must have eaten a great many of those berries,” said Mr. Robin.
“Well, I notice one thing,” Jolly observed. “My waistcoat is fast losing its 14 black spots. And it’s redder than it was. The red berries certainly colored it in some way.”
Mr. Robin replied that he had never heard of such a thing happening. He looked curiously at his son’s waistcoat.
“It does seem to look different,” he said. “It’s brighter than it was.”
Really, that was only because Jolly was fast growing up. But neither he nor his father stopped to think of that. And since Jolly had learned that motto, “Follow your father’s lead,” he thought his waistcoat ought to be just as red as old Mr. Robin’s was.
So Jolly visited the mountain ash each day and fairly stuffed himself with the bright red fruit.
It did him no harm, anyhow. And he enjoyed eating it.
And the next spring, when Jolly Robin 15 returned to Pleasant Valley, after spending the winter in the South, there was not a redder waistcoat than his in all the neighborhood.