“Oh, Uncle Dave is dyin', is he? Well, we'll go, Archie B., just as soon as Ben Butler can be hooked up. I've got some more calls to make anyway.”
Ben Butler was ready by the time the children started for the mill. Little Shiloh brought up the rear, her tiny legs bravely following the others. Archie B. looked at them curiously as the small wage-earners filed past him for work.
“Say, you little mill-birds,” he said, “why don't you chaps come over to see me sometimes an' lem'me show you things outdoors that's made for boys an' girls?”
“Is they very pretty?” asked Shiloh, stopping and all ears at once. “Oh, tell me 'bout 'em! I am jus' hungry to see 'em. I've learned the names of three birds myself an' I saw a gray squirrel onct.”
“Three birds—shucks!” said Archie B., “I could sho' you forty, but I'll tell you what's crackin' good fun an' it'll test you mor'n knowin' the birds—that's easy. But the hard thing is to find their nests an' then to tell by the eggs what bird it is. That's the cracker-jack trick.”
Shiloh's eyes opened wide: “Why, do they lay eggs, Archie B.? Real eggs like a hen or a duck?”
Archie B. laughed: “Well, I should say so—an' away up in a tree, an' in the funniest little baskets you ever saw. An' some of the eggs is white, an' some blue, and some green, an' some speckled an' oh, so many kind. But I'll tell you a thing right now that'll help you to remember—mighty nigh every bird lays a egg that's mighty nigh like the bird herself. The cat bird's eggs is sorter blue—an' the wood-pecker's is white, like his wing, an' the thrasher's is mottled like his breast.”
Ben Butler was hitched to the old buggy and the Bishop drove up. He had a bunch of wild flowers for Shiloh and he gave it with a kiss. “Run along now, Baby, an' I'll fetch you another when I come back.”
They saw her run to catch up with the others and breathlessly tell them of the wonderful things Archie B. had related. And all through the day, in the dust and the lint, the thunder and rumble of the Steam Thing's war, Shiloh saw white and blue and mottled eggs, in tiny baskets, with homes up in the trees where the winds rocked the cradles when the little birds came; and young as she was, into her head there crept a thought that something was wrong in man's management of things when little birds were free and little children must work.
As she ran off she waved her hand to her grandfather.