Sometimes just:
"All's well!"
But if a strange man came too near the tree his song was sharp and angry.
"Look out, look out, look out!
He's a rogue, an awful rogue, look out, I say!"
But somehow he didn't seem to mind the children.
"Why does Mother Oriole sit so quietly on her nest?" Marmaduke asked his own mother.
"I wish I could lift you up so that you could see. But the nest is too high up. It's out of harm's way. Dicky Means, who has a cruel heart and robs birds' nests, can't reach it way up there!"
"What's in it, Muvver?" asked little Hepzebiah. You see her little tongue didn't work just right. She never could say words with "th" in them.
"Little eggs, dear. They are white, with little dark spots and funny dark scrawls on them as if somebody had tried to write with a bad pen."
Then Marmaduke asked: