“All right, you shall bury it,” said Grandpa soothingly. “I’ll help you. Mother, you and Olive walk along slowly and we’ll catch up to you.”
So Grandma and Sunny’s mother walked ahead, and Grandpa began to help Sunny bury the baby robin.
First, they found a wide, smooth green leaf that grew in the woods and wrapped this about the dead bird and fastened it with the sharp little thorns that grew on another plant and which were every bit as good as pins.
“Now you gather the prettiest fern leaves you can find,” directed Grandpa. “And I’ll dig him a little grave.”
When Sunny Boy came back with his hands full of soft fern leaves, Grandpa had a little square hollowed out in the earth, under a Jack in the Pulpit plant.
“We’ll line it with ferns, so,” he said, arranging the leaves Sunny Boy brought him, “and then we’ll put the bird in so, and cover him up carefully. There! Now we’ll leave him in his nice, green bed, dear, and not be sorry for him any more.
“I see Bruce just ahead. Grandma and Mother must be near.”
They came up to them in a minute, and Sunny Boy suddenly discovered that he was hungry.
“But it isn’t time for lunch yet, precious. Take this apple and try to wait a little longer, do,” said his mother.
“Feels like a thunderstorm,” declared Grandma, sitting down on her camp-stool to get her breath after the walk. “Well, Bruce will tell us in time, won’t you, old fellow?”