After he learned to fly, Jolly Robin's father took him into the woods
to spend each night in a roost where there were many other young
robins, whose fathers had likewise brought them there.
Jolly learned a great deal from being with so many new friends. It was
not long before he could find plenty of food for himself, without help
from anyone.
He discovered, too, that there was safety in numbers. For example, if
Jasper Jay made too great a nuisance of himself by bullying a young
robin, a mob of robins could easily put Jasper to flight.
"_Always help other people!_" That was a motto that all the youngsters
had to learn. And another was this: "_Follow your father's lead!_"
Later in the season, in October, when the robin cousins and uncles and
aunts and sisters and brothers and all the rest of the relations made
their long journey to their winter homes in the South, Jolly found
that there was a good reason for such rules. If he hadn't followed his
father then he might have lost his way, because--since it was the
first time he had ever been out of Pleasant Valley--he knew nothing
whatever about travelling.
He looked forward with much interest to the journey, for as the days
grew shorter he heard a great deal of talk about the trip among his
elders. And while he was waiting for the day when they should leave he
became acquainted with many new and delicious morsels to eat. He
roamed about picking wild grapes, mulberries and elderberries. And he
did not scorn a large, green katydid when he chanced to find one.
There was always some new dainty to be sampled; though as the weather
grew colder Jolly began to understand that in winter Pleasant Valley
would not be so fine a place to live.
However, he managed to find food enough so that he continued to grow
rapidly. The night after he found a mountain ash on a hillside, full
of bright red berries, his father said that he seemed much taller than
he had been that morning.
"You must have eaten a great many of those berries," said Mr. Robin.
"Well, I notice one thing," Jolly observed. "My waistcoat is fast
losing its black spots. And it's redder than it was. The red berries
certainly colored it in some way."
Mr. Robin replied that he had never heard of such a thing happening.
He looked curiously at his son's waistcoat.
"It _does_ seem to look different," he said. "It's brighter than it
was."
Really, that was only because Jolly was fast growing up. But neither
he nor his father stopped to think of that. And since Jolly had
learned that motto, "_Follow your father's lead_," he thought his
waistcoat ought to be just as red as old Mr. Robin's was.
So Jolly visited the mountain ash each day and fairly stuffed himself
with the bright red fruit.
It did him no harm, anyhow. And he enjoyed eating it.
And the next spring, when Jolly Robin returned to Pleasant Valley,
after spending the winter in the South, there was not a redder
waistcoat than his in all the neighborhood.