The three happy children were glad that the mother bird had come with the father bird up from the sunny South. They heard him whistle again:
"In the Winter we go South, dear,
But in the Spring to the North we wing."
Then together they flew back to the elm. They were house-hunting. Back on the roof of the barn there was a little house of wood with doors for the pretty pigeons, but there were no houses of any kind on the old elm. Still the Orioles did not worry about that. They were not lazy, oh no!
They were just looking for a place to build. They must have found it, for the Oriole sang again (he was always changing his song):
"My dear, my dear,
Sunny—quiet—lovely—here."
He had chosen a branch about thirty feet from the ground. Mother Oriole quietly answered back that it suited her perfectly. They both flew down to the ground, then back to the tree. And every time they travelled they had little pieces of grass or bark in their bills. But Mother Oriole did most of this work, which was quite proper, for mothers always do most of the work about the house, don't they? Father Oriole, you see, was more interested in getting fat beetles and caterpillars for food. And that was quite right too. But once he sang out louder than ever, for he had found a bit of string from Jehosophat's broken kite.
"The very thing, the very thing," he said to her.
And once Mother Oriole found, caught in the shutter, little threads of Hepzebiah's hair.
Then the three happy children woke up. They rubbed their eyes. They had been dreaming in the warm sun.
But their dream was true and the fairy story was true.