d just gobbled; in two minutes all the berries were
gone, but the birds stayed round all the same, hinting for more. We
hadn't many berries left, so mother said, 'Try if they will eat meal.' I
mixed some meal in a pan with hot water and spread it in little puddles
on the snow. The Robins acted real mad at first, because it wasn't
berries, but after a while one pecked at it and told the others it was
all right, and then thirty Robins all sat in a row and ate that meal up,
the same as if they were chickens." Here Rap paused and laughed at the
thought of the strange sight.

"Pretty soon after that the snow melted, and by April Robins were
building around in our yard, in the maples by the road, and all through
this orchard. One day I noticed some little twigs and a splash of mud on
our back steps, and when I looked up I saw that something was building a
nest in the crotch of the old grape vine. 'That's a queer place for a
nest,' I said to myself, 'not a leaf on the vine and my window right on
top. I wonder what silly bird is doing it.'

"Flap, and my Robin with the broken feathers came along with his mouth
full of sticks; but when he saw me he dropped them and went over on the
clothes-pole, and called and scolded like everything. Then I went up to
my window and looked through the blind slats. Next day the nest was
done. It wasn't a pretty nest--Robins' never are. They are heavy and
lumpy, and often fall off the branches when a long rain wets them. This
one seemed quite comfortable inside, and was lined with soft grass.

"Mrs. Robin looked like her husband, but I could tell the difference;
for she didn't sit in the pines and sing, and her breast wasn't so red.
When the nest was done, she laid a beautiful egg every day until there
were four, and then one or the other of the birds sat on the eggs all
the time. Robins' eggs are a queer color--not just blue or quite green,
but something between, all of their own."

"Yes," said Olive, "it is their own color, and we give it a name; for it
is called 'robin's-egg blue' in our books."

"The old birds had been sitting for ten days, and it was almost time for
the little ones to come out, when one night there was a great wind and
the grape vine, that was only fastened up with bits of leather and
tacks, fell down in a heap. In the morning there was the nest all in a
tangle of vine down on the ground. The vine must have swung down, for it
hadn't tipped the nest over, and the mother bi