“So many birds live in the tree,
We do not want for fun.”
Tuesday morning dawns brightly, and Tuesday’s sun soon dries up the gravelled garden walks and shady croquet ground of Aunt Emma’s pleasant, roomy garden, where the merry party of young folk are feasting, like the bees, tasting the various cups of pleasure which nature offers, in most tempting freshness, to little city children in their visits to the country.
The Funny house on Funny street, though almost in the centre of the city’s trade and bustle, is surrounded by a large, old-fashioned garden, where still may be seen those grand floral sentinels, the gay hollyhocks and the rich golden lily, whilst their lowly companions, the larkspur, sweet pea, and marigold still grace the garden borders, disdaining the urns and hanging baskets which confine their modern sisters.
The humming-bird and the golden butterfly still hover about this festive spot, and the fattest of scarlet-vested robin gentry still sing out their siren song, “Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,” from the great cherry and old pear-trees which have escaped the woodman’s axe.
Did you ever notice, children, how pert the robins are in such old city gardens?
They seem to think they are indeed privileged guests.
Aunt Emma, sitting under the shady arbor, with its drapery of clematis and honeysuckle, told the children that, one June morning, she had discovered that the robins were greedily devouring her choicest strawberries, so she told Hugh to hang a bell on a stick planted in the midst of the strawberry-bed, and fasten to it a long cord which should reach to her sitting-room window.
The next morning she laughed to herself as she heard the “Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,” of the early morning pillagers, saying—
“Ha, ha! my gay visitors. For your naughtiness you shall lose your dainty breakfast. Stealing my finest berries without so much as ‘By your leave, ma’am.’”