But Montgomery was already flopping his wings at a great rate, and had started to fly when the heavy nest fell right on top of him, and there was little Montgomery under the nest, and the nest was wrong side up on the ground.
“Help! Help!” screamed little Montgomery. “Help! Help! I am under the nest!”
Robert Robin tugged at the nest, but the nest was too heavy for him to lift. Mrs. Robin came, and both of them tugged and pulled at the nest, but it was so heavy that both of them together could not lift it.
“Let us tear the nest apart!” said Mrs. Robin, but the dry mud was so hard that the twigs could not be pulled apart.
Just then Elizabeth went fluttering past, and little Sheldon fell off his limb, and Evelina began crying—she was so frightened,—so both parent birds were forced to leave poor little Montgomery under the heavy nest and look after their other children.
And what a time they had with them! For over an hour the three little robins went flying in all directions through the woods. Mister Tom Squirrel sat on a limb and laughed and chuckled, and said to Robert Robin: “The way your baby robins fly makes me remember the time I showed my cousins—the flying squirrels—the way to fly straight down!”
But Mister Robin was too excited to feel like visiting with Mister Tom Squirrel. He was afraid that he would lose one of his children. But at last the baby robins were tired enough to feel like resting. Little Sheldon was in the top of a cedar tree, Elizabeth was sitting in a green osier, and little Evelina was sitting on Mister Chipmunk’s stump, but poor little Montgomery was still under the heavy nest, and neither Robert Robin nor Mrs. Robin could think of any way to get him out.
Over in the pasture a cow was wearing a cowbell. Every time the cow moved her head the bell said “Tonk! Tonkle! Tonk! Tonkle!” Robert Robin could hear the cowbell making the noise to let the farmer know where his brindle cow was. But Robert Robin kept hearing another sound. “Tonkle! Tonkle!” Then he heard some one talking, and he saw two little girls coming into the woods. They were out strawberrying, and they were carrying tin pails on their arms, and whenever they dropped a strawberry in their tin pails it made a noise like “Tonkle! Tonkle!”
“Let us go through this corner of the woods, and maybe we will find some white strawberries!” said one little girl.