“If you were a bird you’d be a bluebird, I guess,” said Sarah Barnes, as she glanced at the deep blue sailor suit, with the crimson shield in front, that Goldilocks wore.
“I’d rather be a big owl,” said Tommy Todd, “and sit up in a tree in the woods and call out ‘Woo-oo-oo’ when people go by in the dark and scare ’em.” And he gave such a good imitation of an owl’s hoot that Bruce, the Collie dog, who always either walked or sat beside Goldilocks’ chair, began to bark and circle wildly about, nose in air.
“I’m very sure I shouldn’t care to be an owl, for then I should have to eat meadow-mice and moles, and swallow them, fur and all, and that would taste so mussy,” said Goldilocks.
So it came about that all the children were in very good humour when they entered Birdland on Goldilocks’ birthday, and Gray Lady smiled happily as she looked at the group with her precious daughter in the midst and thought that her experiment had begun with a happy omen.
Though many of the apples that grew on the trees of the old orchard would not have taken prizes at the country fair, they looked very tempting to the youngsters,—Baldwins, Spitzenburghs, and russets of two sorts, the green and the golden, were still on the trees, but there were great heaps of earlier varieties on the ground, and Jacob and another man were busy sorting them over.
Reading in the children’s eager faces what they would like to do, Gray Lady said, “You may run off now and have all the apples you want, and an hour for playing ‘hide-and-seek,’ ‘red lion,’ or ‘Indians,’ in all the orchard and meadows and woodland yonder, and then when you hear a horn blow come back and you will find us over in the corner where the table and seats are placed.” Then, seeing that some of the girls had brought wraps or jackets with them, and also that the Sunday-best hats that they wore would be in the way of romping, Gray Lady told them to hang them on the tree nearest where she and Miss Wilde were seated.
At first Sarah and Tommy were not going with the others, but Goldilocks insisted that they should leave her in a gap where the rows of trees formed a long lane through which she could see across the meadows to the woods.
These two children were quite at home in this neighbourhood, for had there not been a particular gap in the old fence through which they had taken a “short cut” down to the village ever since they could remember?
“I wonder if Goldilocks knows that Quail nest in this brush and scratch around here like chickens,” said Tommy, as they left the orchard for the meadow.
“Yes, and you got that three-story nest of yours last fall in the bough-apple tree,” said Sarah.