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Under the window of a certain pretty little cottage there grew a great
old apple-tree, which in the spring had thousands and thousands of lovely
pink blossoms on it, and in the autumn had about half as many bright red
apples as it had blossoms in the spring.
The nursery of this cottage was a little bower of a room, papered with
mossy-green paper, and curtained with white muslin; and here five little
children used to come, in their white nightgowns, to be dressed and have
their hair brushed and curled every morning.
First, there were Alice and Mary, bright-eyed, laughing little girls, of
seven and eight years, and then came stout little Jamie, and Charlie, and
finally little Puss, whose real name was Ellen, but who was called Puss,
and Pussy, and Birdie, and Toddlie, and any other pet name that came to
mind.
Now it used to happen, every morning, that the five little heads would
be peeping out of the window, together, into the flowery boughs of the
apple-tree; and the reason was this. A pair of robins had built a very
pretty, smooth-lined nest in a fork of the limb that came directly under
the window, and the building of this nest had been superintended, day by
day, by the five pairs of bright eyes of these five children. The robins
at first had been rather shy of this inspection; but, as they got better
acquainted, they seemed to think no more of the little curly heads in
the window, than of the pink blossoms about them, or the daisies and
buttercups at the foot of the tree.
All the little hands were forward to help; some threw out flossy bits of
cotton,—for which, we grieve to say, Charlie had cut a hole in the crib
quilt,—and some threw out bits of thread and yarn, and Allie ravelled
out a considerable piece from one of her garters, which she threw out
as a contribution; and they exulted in seeing the skill with which the
little builders wove everything in. “Little birds, little birds,” they
would say, “you shall be kept warm, for we have given you cotton out of
our crib quilt, and yarn out of our stockings.” Nay, so far did this
generosity proceed, that Charlie cut a flossy, golden curl from Toddlie’s
head and threw it out; and when the birds caught it up the whole flock
laughed to see Toddlie’s golden hair figuring in a bird’s-nest.
When the little thing was finished, it was so neat, and trim, and
workman-like, that the children all exulted over it, and called it “our
nest,” and the two robins they called “our birds.” But wonderful was
the joy when the little eyes, opening one morning, saw in the nest a
beautiful pale-green egg; and the joy grew from day to day, for every day
there came another egg, and so on till there were five little eggs; and
then the oldest girl, Alice, said, “There are five eggs; that makes one
for each of us, and each of us will have a little bird by and by”;—at
which all the children laughed and jumped for glee.
When the five little eggs were all laid, the mother-bird began to sit
on them; and at any time of day or night, when a little head peeped out
of the nursery window, might be seen a round, bright, patient pair of
bird’s eyes contentedly waiting for the young birds to come. It seemed a
long time for the children to wait; but every day they put some bread and
cake from their luncheon on the window-sill, so that the birds might have
something to eat; but still there she was, patiently watching!
“How long, long, long she waits!” said Jamie, impatiently. “I don’t
believe she’s ever going to hatch.”
“O, yes she is!” said grave little Alice. “Jamie, you don’t understand
about these things; it takes a long, long time to hatch eggs. Old Sam
says his hens set three weeks;—only think, almost a month!”
Three weeks looked a long time to the five bright pairs of little
watching eyes; but Jamie said, the eggs were so much smaller than hens’
eggs, that it wouldn’t take so long to hatch them, he knew. Jamie always
thought he knew all about everything, and was so sure of it that he
rather took the lead among the children. But one morning, when they
pushed their five heads out of the window, the round, patient little
bird-eyes were gone, and there seemed to be nothing in the nest but a
bunch of something hairy.
Upon this they all cried out, “O mamma, _do_ come here! the bird is gone
and left her nest!” And when they cried out, they saw five wide little
red mouths open in the nest, and saw that the hairy bunch of stuff was
indeed the first of five little birds.
“They are dreadful-looking things,” said Mary; “I didn’t know that little
birds began by looking so badly.”
“They seem to be all mouth,” said Jamie.
“We must feed them,” said Charlie.
“Here, little birds, here’s some gingerbread for you,” he said; and he
threw a bit of his gingerbread, which fortunately only hit the nest on
the outside, and fell down among the buttercups, where two crickets made
a meal of it, and agreed that it was as excellent gingerbread as if old
Mother Cricket herself had made it.
“Take care, Charlie,” said his mamma; “we do not know enough to feed
young birds. We must leave it to their papa and mamma, who probably
started out bright and early in the morning to get breakfast for them.”
Sure enough, while they were speaking, back came Mr. and Mrs. Robin,
whirring through the green shadows of the apple-tree; and thereupon all
the five little red mouths flew open, and the birds put something into
each.
It was great amusement, after this, to watch the daily feeding of the
little birds, and to observe how, when not feeding them, the mother
sat brooding on the nest, warming them under her soft wings, while the
father-bird sat on the tip-top bough of the apple-tree and sang to them.
In time they grew and grew, and, instead of a nest full of little red
mouths, there was a nest full of little, fat, speckled robins, with
round, bright, cunning eyes, just like their parents; and the children
began to talk together about their birds.
“I’m going to give my robin a name,” said Mary. “I call him Brown-Eyes.”
“And I call mine Tip-Top,” said Jamie, “because I know he’ll be a tip-top
bird.”
“And I call mine singer,” said Alice.
“I ’all mine Toddy,” said little Toddlie, who would not be behindhand in
anything that was going on.
“Hurrah for Toddlie!” said Charlie, “hers is the best of all. For my
part, I call mine Speckle.”
So then the birds were all made separate characters by having each a
separate name given it. Brown-Eyes, Tip-Top, Singer, Toddy, and Speckle
made, as they grew bigger, a very crowded nestful of birds.