"Yes, Daddy, please do that," said the second little voice earnestly, "and while you are out, I'll get the children to sleep, so they won't be stupid when moving time comes."
Then there came the sound of something almost, but not quite, like the flutter of wings, and Buddy Jim was surprised to see what looked like a very tiny air-plane sailing across the loft and out at the window that had been left open for the barn swallows.
"Now I wonder," said Buddy Jim, "who these funny little people can be?" Just then across the loft, came the sound of a little, croony, sleepy-time song. Just the kind of a song that mothers the world over sing to their babies at bed time.
Presently it died away, and all was still, and Buddy Jim knew that the babies, whoever they were, had gone to sleep.
"I'm going to find out who that is," said he, crawling softly across the hay towards the place from where the sound of the voices and the singing had come. Presently, in the dim light he could just make out a tiny creature in a tawny dress sitting on a tuft of hay. She had been daintily munching the seeds from a buttercup stalk. But now she sat very still. Buddy sat very still, too. He knew that the small Mother person had seen him.
But she did not run away. She couldn't, you see. Because her precious babies were there. So she sat quite still and hoped that Buddy Jim had not seen her.
"Don't be afraid of me," said Buddy Jim, "I'm just a neighbor, and I won't hurt you."
"My! you make me breathe easier," said the small Mother person, "most boys would drive me away and take my babies away to live in one of those dreadful prisons they call cages. My! I'm glad that you are not that kind of boy. Why," she went on, "we came into this hay loft to live because we thought there wasn't a boy on the farm."
"There wasn't until my Daddy bought it," said Buddy Jim. "We came in the Springtime. Daddy wants me to know all about my little country neighbors. You see I'm from the city, and I've never seen many wild creatures—nobody but Reddy Bat—so I just want to know them all. I wouldn't hurt your babies, and I wouldn't think of taking them away."