Plenty of fine mornings came and went, and busier than ever were all the
birds. Nests had been built; eggs had been laid; little callow birds
had been hatched; and the little mouths wanted so much feeding that
there was not even time to sing. But there was a good deal of
discomfort and unpleasantry abroad, for a young relative of Spottleover
the thrush had lost three or four eggs from his nest at the bottom of
the garden. Of course they had been stolen, but who was the culprit? A
chattering old sparrow said it was one of the rooks; and when the report
got up in the rookery there was a fine commotion about it that evening,
for the rooks held quite a parliament to vindicate the innocence of
their order; and at last passed a vote of censure upon the sparrow for
his false accusation; agreed to send him to Coventry; and, as one old
rook said, it would have been much more to his credit to have had his
shirt-front washed, for it was dreadfully dirty, than to have gone
making the rooks out blacker than they really were. Then someone said
it was the magpie; but he was dreadfully indignant about it, and his
long tail trembled with passion; but he quite cleared his character
before he flew back to his nest in the great elm down the field, for as
he very truly said, if the case had been respecting a young bird or two,
and times had been very hard, he might have fallen into temptation, and
taken a callow nestling; "but as to eggs," he said, laying a black paw
upon his white waistcoat, "upon his honour, no, not even if they were
new laid."
And so the eggs kept going, and nobody knew where; for they all felt
when the magpie said "Tar-tar," and flew away, that he had spoken openly
and honourably, and was not the thief. At last one evening, when all
the birds were as busy as their old friends the bees, all of a sudden
there was a complete full stop throughout the garden, for from one of
the low branches of the great cedar someone suddenly shouted out in a
full, loud, and distinct voice--"Cuckoo!" and again two or three times
over--"Cuckoo!"
"Halloa!" said Flutethroat, ceasing his worm hunt, "who is that?"
"Cuckoo," said Spottleover, dropping a snail; "what does that mean?"
And all through the garden there ran a thrill of excitement, for the
thrush's cousin flew up to the birds who had collected together, and
told them he had seen the thief in the act of taking an egg, and he had
flown into the cedar-tree. He was a long ugly bird in a striped
waistcoat, and--