hange the steady gaze of his great glass eyes. "Help! Help!"
screamed Samson Crow, and he flew away to the woods, and Widow Blunt
laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and rocked backwards and forwards in
her splint-bottomed chair.

Robert Robin kept waiting, and saying, "Tut! Tut! Tut!--Tut! Tut! Tut!"
and wishing that the big owl would fly away, but the big owl did not
move, and just stared straight ahead with his great glass eyes.

About four o'clock Widow Blunt put on her sunbonnet and her cotton
gloves with the fingers cut off, and with an eight-quart tin pail with
strips of zinc soldered across the bottom of it, she climbed the
stepladder and picked eight quarts of ripe red cherries from her early
cherry tree, and the big stuffed owl watched her with his great glass
eyes, and never said a word.

Then the Widow Blunt took her eight-quart pail full of ripe red cherries
into her kitchen and set it on the kitchen table, then she went back to
where her stepladder was standing under the cherry tree, and climbed her
stepladder once more and untied the stuffed owl, and put him under her
arm, and carried him back to her parlor and put him on the mantelpiece
and set the big glass dome over him, to keep the dust off.

Widow Blunt carried her stepladder back into her woodhouse, then she
hung her sunbonnet on a nail behind the kitchen door, and put her cotton
gloves in the secretary drawer, where she would know where to find them
when the berry-picking season came. Widow Blunt then looked out of the
kitchen window, and saw Robert Robin picking one of her ripe red
cherries. Then Widow Blunt sat down in her splint-bottomed chair by the
kitchen window and watched Robert Robin and Mrs. Robert Robin come and
pick her cherries.

"Those robins will not let any of my cherries go to waste," she said.
"But I suppose they have a large family to feed, and eight quarts is all
I need for myself!" And Widow Blunt rocked backwards and forwards in her
splint-bottomed chair and watched the robins, and the next thing she
knew the clock struck six and woke her up.

"Mercy! I went to sleep in my chair!" she said. "Now I will have to
hurry to get those cherries canned before dark!"

"Where did the big owl go?" asked Mrs. Robin of Robert Robin.

"A woman caught him and carried him away, but he ate many of the very
best cherries before she caught him!" said Mister Robert Robin.

CHAPTER IV

MISTER ROBERT ROBIN HAS AN ADVENTURE WITH THE