“Nya,” rejoined Peter, “you only thought of making hay ones and sticking them in the ivy for the sparrows, and they'd have been sopping LONG before egg-laying time. It was me said clay and swallows.”
“I don't care what you said.”
“Look,” said Bobbie, “I've made the nest all right again. Give me the bit of stick to mark your initial name on it. But how can you? Your letter and Peter's are the same. P. for Peter, P. for Phyllis.”
“I put F. for Phyllis,” said the child of that name. “That's how it sounds. The swallows wouldn't spell Phyllis with a P., I'm certain-sure.”
“They can't spell at all,” Peter was still insisting.
“Then why do you see them always on Christmas cards and valentines with letters round their necks? How would they know where to go if they couldn't read?”
“That's only in pictures. You never saw one really with letters round its neck.”
“Well, I have a pigeon, then; at least Daddy told me they did. Only it was under their wings and not round their necks, but it comes to the same thing, and—”
“I say,” interrupted Bobbie, “there's to be a paperchase to-morrow.”
“Who?” Peter asked.