"Hallo, old Yellowbill! what's brought you out so early?" said a fine
fat thrush, one bright spring morning, stopping for a moment to look at
his companion, and leaving the great broken-shelled snail he had rooted
out of the ivy bush curling about upon the gravel path. "Hallo, old
Yellowbill! what's brought you out so early?"
"What's that to you, old snail-crusher?" said the blackbird, for he was
in rather an ill temper that morning, through having had a fright in the
night, and being woke up by old Shoutnight the owl, who had been out
mousing and lost his wife, and sat at last in the ivy-tod halloaing and
hoo-hooing, till the gardener's wife threw her husband's old boot out of
the window at him, when he went flop into the laurel bush, and banged
and bounced about, hissing and snapping with his great bill, while his
goggle eyes glowed so angrily that the blackbird's good lady popped off
her nest in a hurry and broke one of her eggs, and, what was worse, was
afraid to go back again till the eggs were nearly cold; and then she was
so cross about it, that although the broken egg was only a bad one, she
turned round upon Flutethroat, her husband, who had been almost
frightened to death, and told him in a pet it was all his fault for not
picking out a better place for the nest.
So it was no wonder that Flutethroat, the blackbird, turned grumpy when
neighbour Spottleover, the thrush, called him "Yellowbill;" for of
course he did not like it any better than a man with a red nose would
like to be called Hot-poker. But it was such a fine morning, and there
were so many dew-worms lying out in the cool grass that the neighbours
could not stop to be crabby. So Spottleover flew off with his snail,
and Flutethroat soon had hold of a thumping, great worm, and set to
work, tug-tug, to draw it from its hole, and then pulled and poked it
about till it was easily to be packed in a knot, when he took it in his
bill and flew off to the laurel bush, where Mrs Flutethroat was busy
sitting upon four green speckly eggs, and waiting very impatiently for
her breakfast.
Just then the sun cocked one side of his great round face over the hill,
and looked down upon Greenlawn garden, where all this took place, and
tried to make the dew-drops glitter and shine upon the grass and leaves;
but he could not, for Dampall, the mist, was out, and had spread himself
all over the place like a great wet smoke; and for ever so long he would
not move, for he did not like the sun at all, because he, as a mist, was
good friends with the moon, and used to let her beams dance all over
him. But it was a fine spring morning, and the sun had got up in a good
humour, and had no end of business to get through that day. There was
all the water on the lowlands to drink up; all the little green buds
just coming out on the trees to warm; the bees to waken up and send
honey-seeking amongst the crocuses, primroses, and violets, that were
all peeping out from amongst last autumn's dead leaves; flies to hunt
out of crevices where they had been asleep all the winter; and old
Bluejacket, the watchman beetle, to wake up from his long doze; as well
as Nibblenut the squirrel, Spikey the hedgehog, and ever so many more
old friends and neighbours; and so, of course, he was not going to be
put down by a cold, raw mist. And, "Pooh!" he said, looking sideways at
it, and, as he got his face a little higher, right through it, "Pooh!
that won't do; you've been up all night, so be off to bed, and don't
think that I am going to put up with any of your nonsense. You had it
all your own way whilst I was busy down south; but I've come back now to
set things right; so off you go."
Whereupon the mist looked as raw and cross as he could, but it was of no
use; so he rolled himself off the lawn, down the hollow, and into the
vale, where he hung about over the river ever so long, evidently meaning
to come back again; but the sun was after him in a twinkling, and so
there was nothing else for it, and the poor mist crept into a cave by
the river's bank, and went to sleep all day.
"Hooray!" said the birds when the mist was gone; and all the little
pearly dew-drops were sparkling and twinkling on the grass. The daisy
opened his eye and sat watching the grass grow; while the bees--as their
grand friends, the great flowers, had not yet come to town--came buzzing
about, and carried the news from daisy to daisy that Queen Spring was
coming, and that there were to be grander doings than ever in the
garden. "Hooray!" said the birds, for they knew it too, and they all
set to work, singing in the gladness of their hearts to think that old
Niptoes the winter had gone at last, and that there would be plenty to
eat, and no more going about with feathers sticking up, and no leaves to
shelter anybody by night.
A fine place was Greenlawn, for there the birds had it all their own
way; not a nest was touched; not a gun was ever seen; and as to powder,
the rooks up in the lime-trees never smelt it in their lives; but built
their great awkward nests, and punched the lawn about till the grubs
used to hold consultations together, and at last determined to emigrate,
but as no one would come out of the ground to make a start, any more
than a mouse could be found bold enough to put the bell on the cat's
neck as told in the old fable, the grubs stopped there year after year,
and had a very, very hard time of it. It was a regular feast-land for
the birds; there were no such buds anywhere else to peck at, for so the
tomtits and bullfinches thought; no such strawberries for the blackbirds
and thrushes; and as to the elder-berries down by the pond, the
starlings used to come in flocks to strip them off, and then carelessly
leave ever so many wasting upon the ground.
"Hooray!" said the birds that morning; and they sang and sang so loudly
and sweetly that the master of the garden opened his window and sat down
to listen to them. But they had something else to do besides sing;
there was courting, and wedding, and building, and housekeeping, going
on all over the garden. Mr and Mrs Redbreast were just married, and
shocking as it may seem, were quarrelling about the place where they
should live. Mr Robin wanted the snug quarters in the ivy, down by the
melon pits; while Mrs Redbreast said it was draughty, and made up her
mind to live in the rockery amongst the fern. Mr and Mrs Specklems,
the starlings, were very undecided about the hole in the chimney-stack,
so much so, that when they had half-furnished it, they altered their
minds and went to the great crack half way up the old cedar, and settled
there; "like a pair of giddy unsettled things," as the jackdaw said, who
meant to have been their neighbour; but was not above taking possession
of the soft bed they had left behind. As to Spottleover, he, too, was
out of temper all the rest of the day, and when Flutethroat met him in
the afternoon he found his neighbour all smeared with clay, and looking
for all the world like a clay-dabbing plasterer as he was.
"There, just look at those wretched little cocktail things," said
Flutethroat, pointing to the wrens, hard at work at their nest, just
when the cock bird flew up on to the wall, perked about for a moment,
sang his song in a tremendous hurry, and seemed to leave off in the
middle, as he popped down again to his work.
"Good job, too," said the thrush; "I wish mine was a cocktail, and then
I shouldn't have had these nobs of clay sticking to it;" saying which he
showed his neighbour three or four little clay-pellets attached to his
tail-feathers, evidently caught up when fetching his mortar from the
pond side.
"Ah! it's a stupid plan that plastering," said a conceited-looking
chaffinch, joining in the conversation. "I wonder your children don't
die of rheumatic gout."
"Take that for your impudence, you self-satisfied little moss-weaver;"
saying which the thrush gave the new-comer such a dig in the back with
his hard bill, that the finch flew off in a hurry, vowing that he would
pass no more opinions upon other people's building.