Mrs. Tree-Creeper. It sounds perfect.
Mr. Tree-Creeper. Yes, but it’s no use waiting here. We must collar it at once. There were a lot of prying birds all about when I was there, and I noticed a particularly nosey flycatcher watching me all the time. Come along quick; and you’d better bring a piece of hay with you to look like business.
III
Mr. Wren. Well, darling, what shall it be this year—one of those boxes at “The Firs,” or the letter-box at “Meadow View,” where the open-air journalist lives, or shall we build for ourselves like honest wrens?
Mrs. Wren. I leave it to you, dearest. Just as you wish.
Mr. Wren. No, I want your help. I’ll just give you the pros and cons.
Mrs. Wren. Yes, dear, do; you’re so clear-headed.
Mr. Wren. Listen then. If we use the nest-box there’s nothing to do, no fag of building, but we have to put up with visitors peeping in every day and pawing the eggs or the kids about. If we use the letter-box we shall have to line it, and there will be some of the same human fussiness to endure; but on the other hand, we shall become famous—we shall get into the papers. Don’t you see the heading, “Remarkable Nest in Surrey”? And then it will go on, “A pair of wrens have chosen a strange abode in which to rear their little fluffy brood——” and so forth.
Mrs. Wren. That’s rather delightful, all the same.
Mr. Wren. Finally, there is the nest which we build ourselves, running just the ordinary risks of boys and ornithologists, but feeling at any rate that we are independent. What do you say?