Rap wriggled about a little, then settled himself comfortably with his chin resting on the top of his crutch, and began: "It was the year that my leg was hurt. The miller was chopping a tree and it fell the wrong way on me and squeezed my leg so that it couldn't be mended; so I was around home all the time. It was a terribly cold day when the Robins came back, along in the first part of March. If it hadn't been for the Robins, anybody would have thought it was January. But in January we don't have big Robin flocks about here, only just twos and threes that pick round the alder bushes and old honeysuckles for berries. It was such a cold day that the clothes froze to the line so that mother couldn't take them off, and we didn't know what to do. Well, we were looking at them, mother and I, when a big Robin flew out of the pine trees and hopped along the clothes-line as if he wanted to speak to us. 'Maybe he's hungry,' said mother. 'I guess he is,' said I; 'the ground is too hard for worms to come out, so he can't get any of them. Can't I give him some of the dried huckleberries?' We always dry a lot every summer, so as to have pies in winter. Mother said I might, so I scattered some on the snow under the pine trees, and we went in the house and peeped out of the kitchen window. At first the Robins chattered and talked for a while, looking squint-eyed at the berries, but then the bird that came on the clothes-line started down and began to eat."
"How did you know that Robin from all the others?" asked Dodo.
"He had lost the two longest quills out of his right wing, and so he flew sort of lop-sided," said Rap readily. "As soon as he began the others came down and just gobbled; in two minutes all the berries were gone, but the birds stayed round all the same, hinting for more. We hadn't many berries left, so mother said, 'Try if they will eat meal.' I mixed some meal in a pan with hot water and spread it in little puddles on the snow. The Robins acted real mad at first, because it wasn't berries, but after a while one pecked at it and told the others it was all right, and then thirty Robins all sat in a row and ate that meal up, the same as if they were chickens." Here Rap paused and laughed at the thought of the strange sight.
"Pretty soon after that the snow melted, and by April Robins were building around in our yard, in the maples by the road, and all through this orchard. One day I noticed some little twigs and a splash of mud on our back steps, and when I looked up I saw that something was building a nest in the crotch of the old grape vine. 'That's a queer place for a nest,' I said to myself, 'not a leaf on the vine and my window right on top. I wonder what silly bird is doing it.'
"Flap, and my Robin with the broken feathers came along with his mouth full of sticks; but when he saw me he dropped them and went over on the clothes-pole, and called and scolded like everything. Then I went up to my window and looked through the blind slats. Next day the nest was done. It wasn't a pretty nest—Robins' never are. They are heavy and lumpy, and often fall off the branches when a long rain wets them. This one seemed quite comfortable inside, and was lined with soft grass.
"Mrs. Robin looked like her husband, but I could tell the difference; for she didn't sit in the pines and sing, and her breast wasn't so red. When the nest was done, she laid a beautiful egg every day until there were four, and then one or the other of the birds sat on the eggs all the time. Robins' eggs are a queer color—not just blue or quite green, but something between, all of their own."
"Yes," said Olive, "it is their own color, and we give it a name; for it is called 'robin's-egg blue' in our books."
"The old birds had been sitting for ten days, and it was almost time for the little ones to come out, when one night there was a great wind and the grape vine, that was only fastened up with bits of leather and tacks, fell down in a heap. In the morning there was the nest all in a tangle of vine down on the ground. The vine must have swung down, for it hadn't tipped the nest over, and the mother bird was sitting on it still.
"'That will never do,' said my mother; 'the first cat that strays by will take the poor thing.' While I was looking at it mother went in the house and came back with a little tin pail. She picked some branches and tied them round it so that the tin didn't show. 'Now,' she said to the Robin, the same as if it understood our language, 'get up and let me see if I can't better you a bit.' Then the bird left the nest, making a great fuss, and crying 'quick! quick!' as if all the woods were afire.
"'Oh, mother!' I cried, 'the eggs will get cold. What are you taking the nest away for? It was better to chance the cats.'