“Oh! I am not doing carpentry work now,” said the bird; “there are some nice little insects under this bark,—sweet things!—which I love as well as you love the lambs.”
“And yet you intend to make a meal upon them—barbarous bird!”
“Yes, as good a meal as you make upon the lamb,—barbarous child! But let us forgive each other; we must eat to live. You would love to eat me if I were nicely cooked, and I should relish you exceedingly if I could only change you into a beetle-bug, or a grub of some sort.”
“Do not talk so, Mr. Carpenter: I would rather go without my dinner than to have you killed and cooked for me.”
“Ah! do you love me so well? Then I will confide in you, and tell you a secret. My chamber is in the trunk of this tree, and my six eggs lie on the floor of it. Jump up here, and I will show it to you.”
“I could not jump twenty feet into the air,” said Lizzy.
“Why! are you not twenty times longer than I am?”
“Oh, more; and more than forty times heavier?”
“Well, well, I will go down and help you up.”