"I thought you always spoke the truth," I remarked, assuming a look of blank amazement.
"Well, prove that I don't."
"Do you mean to say that you think that a simple house, of which this nest is the type, compares favorably with a Fifth Avenue mansion?"
"I do."
"What do you know about such mansions?"
"I have pupils in some of the best of them."
"I hear the voices of many birds, but you are the rara avis of them all," I said, looking very incredulous.
"Not at all; I am simply matter-of-fact. Which is worth the more, a furnished house or the growing children in it?"
"The children ought to be."
"Well, many a woman has so much house and furniture to look after that she has no time for her children. The little brown mother we have frightened away can give nearly all her time to her children; and, by the way, they may take cold unless we depart and let her shelter them again with her warm feathers. Besides, the protesting paterfamilias on the pear-tree there is not aware of our good-will toward him and his, and is naturally very anxious as to what we human monsters intend. The mother bird keeps quiet, but she is watching us from some leafy cover with tenfold his anxiety."