“Don’t go, you’ll fall,” said Fred; “it’s ever so high up, and the boughs won’t bear you.”
“Pooh!” said Harry, “I can do it;” and running along under the great branches that stretched away, drooping towards the ground, he gave a spring, and caught a bough, turned up his heels, and so made his way, hanging head downwards, to the trunk after the same fashion as he did on the day of the fishing excursion. On reaching the trunk, he scaled up from bough to bough, almost as actively as a monkey, till at last he reached the branch which bore the nest, where he stooped puzzled, for Mrs and Mr Passer must have had an eye to safety when they constructed their nest; for unless Master Harry had possessed the activity and lightness of body of the old cock jackdaw he was so lately talking about, there was no chance of his getting any of the tree-sparrow’s eggs for his collection.
“Well, why don’t you throw the nest down?” said Philip, jeeringly.
“’Cos I can’t,” said Harry. “Why don’t you come and sit up here, and look at the blue sky, and then perhaps you could? I’m not going on a thin branch that wouldn’t bear a cat.”
Whereupon down came Master Harry, all over green, and with the cedar spines sticking through his shirt, in his hair, and down his back, and making him shift and shuffle about in a most uncomfortable manner.
“I say,” said Harry, “let’s go off to the wood.”
“Papa wouldn’t like it,” said Philip; “and besides, we are going to-morrow.”
“Oh! ah! and then perhaps it will rain. Do let’s go; we could get the eggs, and Papa would be so pleased.”
“I don’t think he would,” said Fred. “My Papa would not if I went when he told me not.”
“But he didn’t tell us not,” said Harry; “and I know he would like the eggs. I’ll go.”