“There’s that fool at it again,” the female thrush would say; “why can’t he do it in the daytime if he must do it at all?” (She spoke, of course, in twitters, but I am confident the above is a correct translation.)
After a while, the young thrushes would wake up and begin chirping, and then the mother would get madder than ever.
“Can’t you say something to him?” she would cry indignantly to her husband. “How do you think the children can get to sleep, poor things, with that hideous row going on all night? Might just as well be living in a saw-mill.”
Thus adjured, the male thrush would put his head over the nest, and call out in a nervous, apologetic manner:—
“I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn’t mind being quiet a bit. My wife says she can’t get the children to sleep. It’s too bad, you know, ’pon my word it is.”
“Gor on,” the corncrake would answer surlily. “You keep your wife herself quiet; that’s enough for you to do.” And on he would go again worse than before.
Then a mother blackbird, from a little further off, would join in the fray.
“Ah, it’s a good hiding he wants, not a talking to. And if I was a cock, I’d give it him.” (This remark would be made in a tone of withering contempt, and would appear to bear reference to some previous discussion.)
“You’re quite right, ma’am,” Mrs. Thrush would reply. “That’s what I tell my husband, but” (with rising inflection, so that every lady in the plantation might hear) “he wouldn’t move himself, bless you—no, not if I and the children were to die before his eyes for want of sleep.”
“Ah, he ain’t the only one, my dear,” the blackbird would pipe back, “they’re all alike”; then, in a voice more of sorrow than of anger:—“but there, it ain’t their fault, I suppose, poor things. If you ain’t got the spirit of a bird you can’t help yourself.”