He had hardly gone, when Mrs. Yellow-bird came in sight. "My dear friend," Minnie began.
"A pretty friend!" she interrupted; "think of the trouble you've caused me!"
"Ah, you can pretend not to know; but I am sure Master Squirrel has told you what he did, in spite, because I helped carry the humming-bird home for you, one day, and tipped him out of the car. You never even came to say you were sorry."
"How could I? I do not even know what the mischief was."
"He upset my nest, and killed all my pretty little birds!" And she poured forth a song that seemed to say, "All my little ones, all my pretty birds gone! I can never be happy again!"
Even after yellow-bird was out of sight, the sad notes of her song came back, and she never knew of the tears that Minnie shed for her.
A spider now let herself down by her silken thread from the bough above, where she had been listening to Minnie's words, and pitying her sorrow.
"Come! this is no way to be happy," she said, "and no way to make friends. Who'd care to know such a ragged little witch as you? And you're dusty as a toad. Why don't you wash your face, and mend your gown, and let folks see you are good for something?"
"O, I have tried!" said Minnie, mournfully. "I tried to sew a new gown out of elm leaves; but they were so tender they wilted and tore before I could put them together. Then I picked some beautiful oak leaves, and they were so tough they blunted my needle, and frayed the spider-webs I was sewing with."