VI
MR. CROW TO THE RESCUE
As time went on, and the Green family overslept each morning, Rusty began to grow very weary of the monotonous “Cuckoo! cuckoo!” which came every half hour, all day long, through the kitchen window of the farmhouse.
“I’d like to know what sort of bird that is!” he exclaimed at last. “If he’d only come out here in the yard I’d ask him his name—and tell him what I think of him, too.”
But the stranger never stirred out of the kitchen. And at length Rusty decided to make inquiries about him. Seeing Jimmy Rabbit passing through the orchard on his way home from the cabbage-patch, Rusty called to him.
“If you happen to see old Mr. Crow, I wish you would ask him if he won’t please come right over to the orchard,” Rusty Wren said. “There’s something I want to find out. And Mr. Crow knows so much that perhaps he can help me.”
Jimmy Rabbit declared that he would be delighted to deliver the message. And he must have gone out of his way to find Mr. Crow, for the old gentleman arrived at the orchard in less than sixteen minutes.
Rusty was waiting for him. And, having explained about the strange bird as well as he could, he asked Mr. Crow what he thought.