Notwithstanding these slight interruptions, everything went off most satisfactorily, and all were sorry enough when the time arrived to say good-bye.
The children assembled in front of the old house, and sang a short hymn––
| “We are but little children weak;” |
and then they were marched off to their different homes, and Willie went to bed, his thoughts full of the happy day they had had, and the words of the children’s hymn still sounding in his ears.
The Blackbird had thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. There had been no drawbacks. Although he had not been one of the invited guests, he felt somehow that he had been welcome, and he was very pleased 59 to have seen so much of his two young friends, and to have left them so happy.
At this summer-time, it was a great pleasure to the Blackbird during the afternoon to perch on the limb of an old fir-tree on the lawn, and watch the squirrels at their gambols. They would play long, long games of hide and seek among the dark branches, and then, tired of that, they would chase each other from bough to bough, scattering the pine-cones, which dropped with a soft sound on the grass below. Little wagtails ran nimbly about the lawn uttering their shrill “quit, quit,” and catching as they ran the gnats and other insects. The small dark heads of the swallows could be seen as they crouched and twittered beneath the gables of the old mansion, and the distant trickling of water made a soft accompaniment to these varied sounds.
One afternoon when the Blackbird was thus perched on his favourite fir-branch he saw the old Rook sailing slowly by. He had not seen his old friend for some time, so he gladly welcomed and joined him. Away they flew to a copse beyond the lake where hazels and alders grew. A bright, pebbly stream wound through this copse, babbling cheerily as it went, 60 and both birds alighted on an overhanging bough to watch the tiny fish as they poised and darted backwards and forwards. At a bend of the stream a little higher up, a brilliant-hued kingfisher was on the watch, and another bird of much soberer plumage was perched on a hazel bough beyond. He had yellow legs, a long tail, and ashen-coloured plumage spotted with white, which attracted the Blackbird’s attention, for he did not remember ever to have seen him before.
“Do you know that bird?” inquired the Blackbird, nodding in the direction of the stranger.
“Indeed I do,” replied the Rook, dryly; “but he’s no friend of mine I assure you. He’s one of the laziest and most unprincipled of creatures. He has only one good point about him, that’s his note, and you must know that well. His ‘twofold shout’ of cuckoo is a welcome sound to every one, for it tells us that Spring is here. As I said, however, that is his only good point,––for, can you believe it? he never builds a nest!”
“Never builds a nest!” exclaimed the Blackbird in astonishment, “then where does he lay his eggs?”