from a safe distance. Full of his
cannibal meal, Mister Bluejay callously ignored her. He was more
interested in us. Down he came, nearer yet, with a flirt of fine
wings, a spreading of barred tail, just above Flint's head, and
talked jocularly to his friend in jayese.

"You're a thief and a robber!" raged the Butterfly Man. "You're a damn
little bird-killer, that's what you are! I ought to wring your neck
for you, and I'd do it if it would do the rest of your tribe any good.
But it wouldn't. It wouldn't bring back the lost eggs nor the spoiled
nest, either. Besides, you don't know any better. You're what you are
because you were hatched like that, and there wasn't Anything to tell
you what's right and wrong for a decent bird to do. The best one can
do for you is to get wise to your ways and watch out that you can't do
more mischief."

The bluejay, with his handsome crested head on one side, cocked his
bright black eye knowingly, and passed derisive remarks. Any one who
has listened attentively to a bluejay must be deeply grateful that the
gift of articulate speech has been wisely withheld from him; he is a
hooligan of a bird. He lifted his wings like half-playful fists. If he
had fingers, be sure a thumb had been lifted profanely to his nose.

The Butterfly Man watched him for a moment in silence; a furrow came
to his forehead.

"Damn little thief!" he muttered. "And you don't even have to care!
No! It's not right. There ought to be some way to save the mothers and
the nests from your sort--without having to kill you, either. But good
Lord, how? That's what I want to know!"

"Beat 'em to it and stand 'em off," said Laurence, staring at the
ravaged nest, the unhappy mother, the gorged impenitent thief. "'Git
thar fustest with the mostest men.' Have the nests so protected the
thief can't get in without getting caught. Build Better Bird Houses,
say, and enforce a Law of the Garden--Boom and Food for all, Pillage
for None. You'd have to expect some spoiled nests, of course, for you
couldn't be on guard all the time, and you couldn't make all the birds
live in your Better Bird Houses--they wouldn't know how. But you'd
save some of them, at any rate."

"Think so?" said John Flint. "Huh! And what'd you do with _him_?" And
he jerked his head at the screaming jay.

"Let him alone, so long as he behaved. Shoo him outside when he
didn't--and see that he kept outside," said Laurence. "You see, the
idea isn't so much to r