“Mister Robin is getting uneasy so I had better hurry home before he does something desperate!”
Mrs. Partridge watched Mrs. Robin as she flew back to her nest in the tall basswood tree.
“That little Mrs. Robin is a very neat sort of a little body!” she said to herself. “I just know that she is a tidy nest keeper,—she always looks so spick and span, herself!”
Robert Robin could hardly wait until Mrs. Robin got back to their tree. He was in such a hurry. The moment she settled herself on the nest he darted away across the fields, straight to where the row of cherry trees bordered the farmer’s garden.
He wanted to see if the cherries were ripe. But he was surprised to find that the cherries were all green and hard, and were too sour to even taste like a cherry.
“What makes the cherries so late, this year?” he thought to himself. “It does seem to me that these trees were in bloom so many weeks ago, that it is high time for them to be ready with their cherries!”
Robert Robin was sitting in the top of one of the farmer’s cherry trees, thinking about the cherries that ought to be ripe when he saw a cat in the farmer’s garden.
It was a big Maltese cat. It was a pretty cat, but Mister Robert Robin could not see anything pretty about a cat, and he did not like the looks of this one.
“I never saw this cat before!” thought Robert Robin. “The farmer must have a new cat! I hope it is a house-cat instead of a cat that goes prowling around the fields and woods!”
The big Maltese cat went over to the strawberry bed and lay down on some straw. Then the farmer’s wife came into the garden, and there was a little boy with her. He was her sister’s boy, and he was going to spend the summer at the farmer’s home. The boy had a tin whistle, and once in a while he would blow upon it. The farmer’s wife was thinking to herself, “After he goes to bed to-night, I am going to hide that whistle where he can’t find it!” But she did not say a word to the little boy about the whistle.