th your feathers all wet?" exclaimed Mrs. Robin. "I am trying to keep
the eggs dry and warm!"

"Let me try it once!" said Robert Robin.

"No! Thank you, dear! your intentions are good, but you are so clumsy
you would be almost sure to break one of the eggs, and to-day is the day
they will hatch!"

"I wish that it would stop raining!" said Robert Robin.

"Why not sing your 'Dry Weather' song?" asked Mrs. Robin. "The rain
might stop coming if it heard you singing your 'Dry Weather' song!"

"I only sing my 'Dry Weather' song when the weather is dry!" answered
Robert Robin. "Still I would do almost anything to make this rain stop
coming down!"

So Robert Robin flew up to the top of his big basswood tree to sing his
"Dry Weather" song, in the rain.

Mister Jim Crow was sitting in his tall hemlock tree. He was wishing
that the rain would stop falling, for he was as wet as water could make
him. From over the tops of the tall forest trees came the sound of
Robert Robin singing his "Dry Weather" song:

"Dry up the crick!
Dry up the crick!
Dry up the beetles!
Dry up the beetles!
Dry up the crick!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughed Jim Crow. "That funny Robert Robin is singing his
'Dry Weather' song! He is saying 'dry up the crick!'--he means 'creek'
of course, but could anything be funnier than that wet bird sitting in
the rain, and singing about dry weather? The creek is roaring down
through the sheep pasture, like a yellow river! 'Dry up the crick!' Ha!
Ha! Ha!" and Jim Crow laughed so hard that he forgot all about being
wet.

"Dry up the crick!" screamed Robert Robin over and over again, until he
was too tired to sing any more. Then he perched near Mrs. Robin and
said, "I sang it seven times, but the rain is coming down harder than
ever!"

"Well! You did your best, dear!" said Mrs. Robin. "It isn't your fault
if it rains," and she could smell his feathers, they were so wet.

Suddenly the sky grew lighter, and with a roar that shook the earth a
mighty wind swept through the woods; the clouds began to break away; the
blue sky shone in patches between the torn clouds, and the rain was
over.

No more rain fell, but all that night the fierce wind raved and roared,
and when the sun came up in the east once more, the fierce gusts were
whipping the branches of the elms, and twisting the tops of the tall
pines, but Robert Robin's big basswood tree stood on the northeast side
of the forest, so that the wind