Silvertip watched her hungrily, and if you were a Cat you might have done exactly the same thing. So you must not blame Silvertip. He was creeping, creeping, creeping nearer, and never looking away from her, when the Little Boy came tramping across the grass. He had come in by the gate of the driveway, and was walking straight toward Silvertip, who neither saw nor heard him.
Then the Little Boy saw what was happening, and dropped his bright paper chain on the grass beside him. “G’way!” he cried, waving his umbrella. “G’way! Don’t you try to eat any birds ’round here. My father doesn’t ’low it. G’way! G’way! Else I’ll tell my mother that you are a bad Cat.”
Silvertip fled under the porch, the Robin flew up onto the snowball bush, and all around the birds sang the praises of the good Little Boy with the umbrella. But the Little Boy didn’t know this. He stood by the porch and dangled his pretty paper chain until Silvertip forgave him and came out to play. Then they ran together into the house, and the birds heard him shouting, “Mother! Mother! Where are you? I want to give Silvertip some cream. He is so very hungry that he most had to eat up a Robin, only I wouldn’t let him.”
THE PERSISTENT PHŒBE
IT is not often that a Phœbe will nest anywhere except near running water, and nobody but the Phœbes themselves will ever know why this pair chose to build under a porch of the big house. When they came there on their wedding trip the other birds supposed that they were only visiting, and it was not until a Catbird heard them discussing different porches that any one really believed they might come there to live.
Mrs. Phœbe was eager to begin at once, and could not pass a soft bit of moss or an unusually good blade of grass without stopping to look it over and think how she could weave it in. “I see no use in waiting,” said she. “I know just as much about building now as I shall after a while, and I should like a home of my own. It makes my bill fairly tingle to see all these fine grasses and mosses waiting to be used. And the worst of it is,” she added, “that if we wait, some other bird may get them instead.”
Mr. Phœbe wanted to think it over a little longer. He was older than his wife and had been married before. “Phœbe!” he would exclaim. “Wait a day. You know we are building by a house to please you, now wait one more day to please me.”
That, you see, was quite right and perfectly fair, for it is not fair for one person to decide everything in a family, and it was right for the wife to wait as long as she could. She could not, of course, wait many days, for there were eggs to be laid, and when it was time for them, the nest had to be ready. Mr. Phœbe knew this and wasted no time.