There was really no reason for Rusty’s flying through the open window, beyond the fact that he liked to prowl around the great, dusty room under the eaves, to see what he could find. Once he was inside, he noticed something that had not caught his eye on his former visit. Hanging from a rafter, where the slanting rays of the setting sun fell squarely upon it, was a big bunch of brown tobacco leaves.
Rusty Wren gave a chirp of pleasure at the sight. That was where he must have picked up the bit of tobacco that had clung to his tail feathers and upset his wife’s good nature.
“I’ll go right home and get her and bring her here so she can see this tobacco herself!” he said aloud. “Then she’ll know where that shred came from which fell on the floor.” He did not say “which I brushed onto the floor,” for he never could remember long that he ever did such careless things.
Well, Rusty Wren went out of the window a good deal faster than he had flown in. And, in less time than it takes to tell it, he was perched on top of his house again and calling to his wife.
“I know now where the tobacco came from!” he sang out. “Just come outside and I’ll show you. It’s upstairs in the carriage house!”
To his delight, Mrs. Rusty answered in the sweetest tone imaginable. But she said she didn’t want to come out just then. And she didn’t seem a bit interested in tobacco any more.
“You come right into the house!” she cried. “There’s something here that I want to show you.”
Rusty Wren whisked through the hole in the maple syrup can. Home had never looked quite so good to him before, for he had not been there since the middle of the morning.
“What is it?” he asked eagerly.
His wife was sitting on their nest. And there was nothing new in the house, so far as he could see.