“Whew!” whistled the sparrow; “then I suppose it’s a hopeless case.”
“I don’t see why,” said Mrs. Polly shrewdly.
“How are we going to find them out? Nobody saw ’em come in the night.”
Mrs. Polly put her head on one side with a very knowing look, and cleared her throat gravely.
“We’ll track them,” she said. “Whoever it was must have left some signs behind them. I am tied down here and must trust to you to make investigations; but if you act according to my directions, I don’t doubt but that we’ll get to the bottom of the matter before long.”
“All right,” answered the sparrow; “just say what you want done, and I’m your man.”
“The first thing to do,” said Mrs. Polly, “is to examine carefully the premises. Look on the ground for footprints, and then closely examine the pillar that leads up to the nest, to see if the thieves came that way.”
“Why, what other way could they come, pray?”
“They could fly, couldn’t they?”
The sparrow looked rather ashamed of his slowness of comprehension and made no reply; but then he wasn’t expected to be as shrewd as Mrs. Polly with her many years of experience.