And flutter and fly away!’
Only think, if all those robins’ eggs of yours, Bobby, and all your little eggs, Dave, should suddenly turn into birds and fly about the room, how many there would be! But now they will never have wings and swell their throats to sing to us and use their beaks to eat up insects that make the apples wormy and curl up the leaves of the great shade trees.”
“Robins don’t do any good; they just spoil our berries and grapes; dad says so, and he shoots ’em whenever he can, and he likes me to take the eggs,” said Dave, stubbornly, while Sarah Barnes exclaimed, “Yes, an’ my father says he ought to be ashamed of himself!” almost out loud.
“I know that Robins sometimes eat fruit,” said Gray Lady, firmly, “but they do so much more good by destroying bugs that the Wise Men say that neither they nor their eggs shall be taken or destroyed, and what they say is now a law. So that it is not for any one to do as he pleases in the matter. To kill song-birds or destroy their eggs is as much breaking the law as if you stole a man’s horse or cow, for these birds are not yours; they belong to the state in which you live.”
Bobby and Dave looked surprised, but Tommy and Sarah nodded to one another, as much as to say, “We knew that, didn’t we?”
“Some day, if you are clever with your lessons so that Miss Wilde can spare the time for it, I will tell you all about the reasons for these laws, and what the wild birds do for us, and what we should do for them. But first you must learn to know the names of some of the birds that live and visit hereabout, as I am now learning yours, and make friends of some of them as I hope to make friends of you.”
“Yes, yes, oh, yes!”
“You can’t make friends of birds; they won’t let you,” said Dave Drake, who was a sickly, lanky boy of fourteen with a whining voice; “they always fly away. That is, I mean tree birds, not chickens nor pigeons.”
“Chickens aren’t birds, they’re only young hens,” put in Eliza Clausen, with an expression of withering contempt. She was one of the big fourteen-year-old girls, and not being a good scholar was apt to use opposition in the place of information.
“We can make friends of at least some birds,” said Gray Lady, “if we are kind to them. When we have human visitors come to stay with us, what do we do for them?”