“There he is,” cried Pierre, as Mrs. Wren left her nest and flew over beside him, “with tail down and head up, singing as though he were mad with joy.”
“Such a rapturous song,” said mamma. “It reminds me of two almost forgotten lines:
‘Brown Wren, from out whose swelling throat
Unstinted joys of music float.’
“How well we are repaid for the litter they made, are we not?”
“And sure, mum,” said Bridget, whose big heart had also been touched by the sweet song, “it’s glad I am, for sure, that I wasn’t afther dispossessin’ your tinents. It’s innocent craythurs they be, God bless ’em, a harmin’ ov no wan. Sthill—”
“Well,” queried her mistress, as Bridget paused.
“Sthill, mum, I do be afther wonderin’ if the tin pot had been a hangin’ under the front porch instead of the back, would ye’s been after takin’ the litter so philosophyky like as ye have, mum, to be sure.”
The mistress looked at Bridget and laughingly shook her head.
“That’s a pretty hard nut to crack, Bridget,” said she. “Under those conditions I am afraid I——” What ever admission she was going to make was cut short by a burst of laughter from the children.
“Look at him, mamma, just look at him,” they cried, pointing to Mr. Wren, who, too happy to keep still had flown to the gable at the extremity of the ridge-pole of the house, and after a gush of song, to express his happiness was jerking himself along the ridge-pole in a truly funny fashion. From thence he flew into the lower branches of a neighboring tree, singing and chattering, and whisking himself in and out of the foliage: then back to the roof again, and from roof to tree.