“Squirrie’s—you know the little scamp’s old home in the tree called Snug Hollow had been boarded up, and the only place in the neighborhood he had been able to get was a poor refuge up on a roof. Well, Chickari knew where it was, and he had dashed off to it, and carried away nearly all of Squirrie’s nice winter hoard before he got back. Wasn’t Squirrie furious!
He danced with rage on the moonlit roof when he got home. So a sparrow who slept up there told us. The noise woke him up, and he could plainly see Squirrie scampering, leaping, chattering—nose now up, now down, his four legs digging the snow, his tail wig-wagging! Oh, he was in a rage! He had to go south for the rest of the winter, but he came back in the spring, more wicked than ever, for it was in the following June that he became a murderer.”
“A murderer!” I said in a horrified tone.
“Yes—I will tell you about it, if you are not tired of my chirping.”
“No, no—I just love to hear you,” I said warmly.
CHAPTER VIII
CHUMMY’S OPINIONS
THAT year Jennie and I had a lovely lot of young ones, quite early in June,” said Chummy. “One day we were out getting brown-tail moths, for I assure you we sparrows do eat lots of insect pests. We were just hurrying back to our hole in the wall with our beaks full, when a friendly warbler who was flying by said, ‘Wee-chee chee, chee, hurry, hurry, Squirrie is coming out of your hole licking red paws.’
“We dropped our loads and flew madly through the air.”
“Why, I thought you said he could not get up that sheer wall,” I remarked, looking at it as it stretched above and below us, for we had moved back to Chummy’s front doorway.