BEFORE BREAKFAST.
"Ring the breakfast bell," cried Madam Towhee, "the sun is nearly up. Rap on your tree, Mr. Flicker, and wake up the linnets."
"You are late yourself, Mrs. Towhee," said Mrs. Linnet; "my children have had their breakfast already."
Mr. Flicker opened his sharp eyes and admired his sharp tail shafts. Then he peeped from behind his tree and called out, "Mr. Mocker kept me awake an hour in the night serenading young Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow. That is why I slept so late."
Brown Towhee.
Mr. Mocker, in the top of his house, rang the breakfast bell. It sounded like the linnet and the towhee and the flicker and the robin all together. The mocker laughed, too, like a dozen birds, keeping his clapper going until the other people in the yard could scarcely hear their own voices.
Up jumped little Mrs. Humming-bird and snatched a dewdrop from the cup of a morning-glory on the trellis. "I prefer to drink distilled water," she said, wiping her mouth.