“I wish I could see it with the eggs in it,” said Tommy Smith. But it was no use wishing, he hadn’t wings, and he couldn’t climb the tree. “How many eggs are there?” he asked.
“Two-oo-oo-oo,” said a voice, higher up amongst the foliage; and Tommy Smith knew that the mother woodpigeon was sitting there on her nest, and looking down at him all the while.
“Only two eggs!” he said. “I don’t call that many.”
“It may not be many,” said the mother woodpigeon, “but it is the right quantity. Three would be too many, and one would not be enough. Two is the only possible number.”
“Oh no, indeed it isn’t,” said Tommy Smith eagerly. “Fowls lay a dozen eggs sometimes, and pheasants”—
“Possible for a woodpigeon, I meant,” said the mother woodpigeon. “With fowls, no doubt, anything may take place, but large families are considered vulgar amongst us.”
“Fowls may do what they please,” said the father woodpigeon. “They are lazy birds, and don’t feed their young ones.”
“That is why they lay so many eggs,” said the mother woodpigeon. “They don’t mind having a herd of children, because they know they won’t have to support them.”
Tommy Smith was surprised to hear the woodpigeons talk like this of the poor fowls, for he had often seen the good mother hen walking about with her brood of children, calling to them when she found a worm, and taking care of them so nicely. “It seems to me,” he thought, “that every animal thinks itself better than every other animal; and they all think whatever they do right, just because they do it, and the others don’t. But I suppose that is because they are animals, and not human beings.” Then he said out loud, “But I am sure the mother hen feeds her chickens, because I have seen her scratching up worms for them out of the ground, and”—