Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/151

 another egg, and so on till there were five little eggs.

After that the mother bird began to sit on the eggs, and then it seemed a very long time for the children to wait. But one morning, when they pushed their five curly heads out of the window, the patient little bird was gone and there seemed to be nothing left in the little nest but a bunch of something hairy.

"O, mamma, do come here!" they cried, "the bird has gone and left her nest!" But at that five little red mouths opened wide, and then they saw that the hairy bunch of stuff was five little birds.

"They are dreadful looking things," said one of the children; "I didn't know that little birds began by looking so bad."

But after this it was great fun to watch the parent birds feed this nestful of little red mouths, until it became a nestful of little, fat, speckled robins.

Then, as there were five children, and five robins, they each chose one bird for his own, and they named them Brown-Eyes, Tip-Top, Singer, Toddy, and Speckle.

Time went on, and as Brown-Eyes, Tip