UNDER the cornice of the tool-house was an old cigar-box with a tiny doorway cut in one end and a small board nailed in front of it for a porch. This had been put up for a bird-house, and year after year a pair of Wrens had nested there, until they began to think it really their own. When they left it in the fall to fly south, they always looked back lovingly at it, and talked over their plans for the next summer.
“I think we might better leave this nest inside all winter,” Mrs. Wren always said. “It will seem so much more home-like when we return, and it will not be much trouble to clear it out afterward.”
“An excellent plan, my dear,” her cheerful little husband would reply. “You remember we did so last season. Besides,” he always added, “that will show other birds that Wrens have lived here, and they will know that we are expecting to return, since that is the custom in our family.”
“And then do you think they will leave it for us?” Mrs. Wren would ask. “You know they might want it for themselves.”
“What if they did want it?” Mr. Wren had said. “They could go somewhere else, couldn’t they? Do you suppose I would ever steal another bird’s nesting-place if I knew it?”
“N-no,” said Mrs. Wren, “but not everybody is as unselfish as you.” And she looked at him tenderly.
The Wrens were a most devoted couple,—all in all, about the nicest birds on the place. And that was saying a great deal, for there were many nesting there and others who came to find food on the broad lawn. They were small birds, wearing dark brown feathers on the upper parts of their bodies and lighter grayish ones underneath. Even their bills were marked in the same way, with the upper half dark and the lower half light. Their wings were short and blunt, and they had a habit of holding their tails well up in the air.
People said that Mrs. Wren was very fussy, and perhaps it was true, but even then she was not a cross person. Besides, if she wished to do a thing over five times in order to make it suit her, she certainly had a perfect right to do so. It was she who always chose the nesting-place and settled all the plans for the family. Mr. Wren was quite content to have it so, since that was the custom among Wrens, and it saved him much work. Mr. Wren was not lazy. He simply wanted to save time for singing, which he considered his own particular business. Besides, he never forgot what had happened to a cousin of his, a young fellow who found fault with his wife and insisted on changing to another nesting-place. It had ended in his going, and her staying there and marrying another Wren. So he had lost both his home and his wife by finding fault.
Now the April days had come, with their warm showers and green growing grass. A pair of English Sparrows, who had nested in the woodbine the summer before and raised several large broods of bad-mannered children, decided that they would like to try living in the bird-house. Having been on the place all winter, they began work early. The Blackbirds were already back, and one reminded them that it belonged to the Wrens.
“Guess not now,” said Mr. Sparrow, with a bad look in his eyes. “Nothing belongs to anybody else if I want it. Do you see?” Then he picked up and swallowed a fat Grub which the Blackbird had uncovered for himself and left lying there until he should finish talking. One could hardly blame the Blackbird for being vexed about this, for everybody knows that English Sparrows really prefer seeds, and that this one ate the Grub only to be mean. It did not make the Blackbird any happier to hear his relatives laugh at him in the evergreens above, and he made up his mind to get even with that Sparrow.