me of _his_ little wife? He therefore prepared to fly off, but
before doing so he said, "I hope we sha'n't be shot also, for these
grubs are easier food to get at than the snails. I got hold of some
snails this very morning, and my bill still aches with the trouble they
gave me. I dropped them on the stones to break them, but one, and he was
a fat fellow too, was so obstinate he would neither come out of his
shell, nor could I crack it. So after ten minutes hard work I was
obliged to leave the rascal. They are stubborn creatures, these snails,"
said the Blackbird, with a groan that expressed his deep sense of
injury.

"_That_ they are," replied the Rook, "and they ought to be taught
better."

A few days more went by and then the nest in the evergreen bush was
completed. The inside walls, which were of mud, had been perhaps the
most difficult part of the building, for although the Blackbirds would
very often start off with a nice piece of soft mud in their beaks, it
would get dry, in a very tiresome manner, before they could reach the
nest, and it then crumbled to pieces as they tried to plaster it on the
twigs. The birds persevered, however, and the mud walls were at last
substantially built, and to crown the whole, a lining of soft grass was
added.

The Blackbird was so over-joyed when the nest was finished, that, after
carefully examining it outside to see that each twig was in its proper
place, and looking at the neatly finished interior, he flew off to the
laurel-bushes by the bay window and sang a song of such surpassing
ecstasy that two little brown heads soon made their appearance at a
bed-room window to listen. The little figures were clothed in long white
night-dresses, for they were just going to bed, but they could not miss
such a song. I am sure that if it could have been interpreted it would
have proved to be a chant of joy and praise. The nest was completed, the
home was ready!

That night as long brown lashes sank over soft sleepy eyes the little
heads that belonged to them were still thinking of that jubilant carol,
and about the same time, under the shelter of the ivy leaves, two other
and much smaller heads were full of dreams of the future, of the
newly-built home in the evergreen, and of all that new home might mean.

Some two days after this the Blackbird happened to be perched on the
branch of a dark fir-tree. His young mate had been for some time sitting
steadily on the nest in the evergreen