The nursery of this cottage was a little bower of a room, and here five little children used to come to be dressed and have their hair brushed and curled every morning.
Now it used to happen, every morning, that the five little heads would be peeping out of the window, together, into the flowery boughs of the apple tree; and the reason was this. A pair of robins had built a very pretty, smooth-lined nest directly under the window. The robins, at first, had been rather shy of this inspection; but, as they got better acquainted, they seemed to think no more of the little curly heads in the window than of the pink blossoms about them, or the daisies and buttercups at the foot of the tree.
When the little nest was finished, it was so neat, and workmanlike, that the children all exulted over it, and called it “our nest,” and the two robins they called “our birds.” But wonderful was the joy when the little eyes, opening one morning, saw in the nest a beautiful pale-green egg; and the joy grew from day to day, for every day there came another egg, and so on till there were five little eggs.
After that the mother bird began to sit on the eggs, and then it seemed a very long time for the children to wait. But one morning, when they pushed their five curly heads out of the window, the patient little bird was gone and there seemed to be nothing left in the little nest but a bunch of something hairy.
“O, mamma, do come here!” they cried, “the bird has gone and left her nest!” But at that five little red mouths opened wide, and then they saw that the hairy bunch of stuff was five little birds.
“They are dreadful looking things,” said one of the children; “I didn’t know that little birds began by looking so bad.”
But after this it was great fun to watch the parent birds feed this nestful of little red mouths, until it became a nestful of little, fat, speckled robins.
Then, as there were five children, and five robins, they each chose one bird for his own, and they named them Brown-Eyes, Tip-Top, Singer, Toddy, and Speckle.
Time went on, and as Brown-Eyes, Tip-Top, Singer, Toddy, and Speckle grew bigger, they began to make a very crowded nestful of birds.
Now the children had been taught a little verse which said: