I've been trying ever so long, and they won't let me.
Every now and then I think they have gone to sleep, but they only burst
out worse than ever. There, hark at them; isn't it dreadful?"

"Heigho--he--ha--ha--hum--mum; yes, very," said Flutethroat. "Oh! dear;
how sleepy I am!"

"Sleepy," said Mrs Flutethroat crossly; "so am I; then why don't you go
and stop that dreadful noise?"

"How can I stop it? They have as good a right to be there as we have to
be here; so we must not interfere with them."

"But you must stop it," said his wife, getting so cross that Flutethroat
was obliged to say "Very well," and go slowly towards the fir-tree,
where the tiny birds were sitting in a row, and when he got up to them
there they were tired out and fast asleep; the last one awake having
dropped off just as he was half through saying "weedle," and as he was
going to hop over his neighbours' backs to get in the middle.

Flutethroat stopped to look at the little downy grey mites, and could
not help thinking how pretty they looked; when he went back to the
laurel bush, and found his mate fast asleep too; and so there was
nothing else for it but to turn himself into a ball of feathers, which
he quickly did; and then there was nought to be heard but the night
breezes of early spring rustling through the half bare trees, and
hurrying off to fetch water from the sea to drop upon the ground, so
that flowers and grass might spring up, and earth look bright and gay
once more.

"Kink-kink-kink," cried Flutethroat, darting through the shrubbery next
morning, and rousing up his cousins, who were soon busy at work
finishing their nest and getting everything in apple-pie order. How
hard they all worked; fetching materials from all sorts of distant
places, and picking only those of the most sober hues, such as would not
attract the notice of those people who might be passing by; and then how
carefully was every straw, or hair, or thread woven in and out and
secured, so that the walls of the nests grew up neat, tight, and compact
as possible, and all the while so tightly fastened that nothing short of
great violence could move them from their place. As for the nests of
Flutethroat and his cousins, they were so warmly plastered inside, that
it might have been thought that they meant their little nests to be
substantial houses to last them for years to come.

"Caw-aw--caw-aw--caw-aw," cried a rook up in the high limes.

"Caw-caw-caw-caw,"