Rollo took a great deal of pains with the berries he picked; he chose the largest and ripest, and was very careful not to get in any sticks and leaves. His basket was small, and he intended, as soon as he got it full, to carry it carefully to his mother, and pour his berries into her large tin pail. He was succeeding finely in this, but then he had insensibly strayed away so far from his father, that now he was entirely out of his sight.
At length, as Jim was sitting on a log to rest himself, as he said, he saw a little bird alight on the branch of a black stump near.
“Hash,” said he; “there is a Bob-a-link. See how I will fix him.”
So saying, he picked up a stone, and was going to throw it.
Rollo begged him not to kill that pretty little bird but he paid no attention to what Rollo said. He threw the stone with all his force; but fortunately it did not hit the bird. It struck the limb that the bird was perched upon, and shivered it to fragments, and the bird flew away, terrified.
“Now, what did you do that for?” said Rollo; “you might have hit him.”
“Hit him!” said he; “I meant to hit him, to be sure.”
“But what good does it do to kill little birds? I found one this morning, and I would not kill him for any thing.”
“Where did you find him?” said Jim.
Rollo then told the boys all about his finding a little bird, in its nest floating in the brook, and about their naming him Mosette; as is described in the story called “BLUEBERRYING;” and Jim said, if he had found him, he would have put him on a fence, for a mark to fire stones at. “I would have made him peep, I tell you,” said he.