“Watch your father, children!” said Mrs. Robin. “You must learn to stop, look, and listen before you become a good worm hunter!”
Robert Robin was standing as still as a stick. Then, like a flash, he drove his sharp beak into the green sod and pulled out a long wiggly worm.
In an instant the young robins had seized the worm and were pulling this way and that.
“Look out! Look out!” screamed Robert Robin. “A cat is coming! A cat is coming!”
The young robins dropped the big worm, and all of them flew up into a tulip tree.
The big cat tiptoed across the lawn, until she came to an iron fountain. No water was coming from the fountain, and its basin was dry. It was an old fountain and was not much used.
“Ho! Ho!” said the cat. “Here is a good place to hide! I will get into this old fountain and wait until a robin gets near enough for me to catch. Then I will pounce upon it!”
So the big cat hid in the old iron fountain.
A man was trimming the hedge. He was a caretaker, and he saw the big cat hide in the old iron fountain.
“That old cat thinks that she will hide in the old iron fountain and catch a bird!” he said to himself. “She is the same cat that has been catching birds around here all summer! What she needs is a good dousing!”