Chapter 10

MRS. ROBIN'S WISH



IN order to provide enough food for her children--as well as for the young Cowbird that she was bringing up--Mrs. Jolly Robin had to work hard every day. Though her husband gladly did what he could to help her, he complained sometimes about the stranger in their nest.

"Our family is certainly big enough without him," he often remarked. "We ought to turn him out to shift for himself."

But Mrs. Robin wouldn't hear of such a thing.

"It's not his fault that his mother left him here--in the egg," she would remind Jolly Robin. "If we set him adrift the poor child would starve--unless the cat got him."

And then Jolly Robin would feel ashamed that he had even thought of being so cruel to an infant bird, even if he was a Cowbird. So he would set to work harder than ever gathering worms and grubs and bugs; and before long he would find himself singing merrily, "Cheerily, cheer-up!" because it made him happy to know that he was doing somebody a good turn.

Once in a while Grandfather Mole thrust his head out of the soil of the garden, as if he were watching Mr. and Mrs. Robin at their task. Of course he couldn't see what they were doing. But Mrs. Robin said that it gave her a queer turn to have Grandfather Mole stick his nose out of the ground at her very feet. And since he was too busy catching angleworms for himself to help her and her husband, she wished he would keep out of sight.

Sometimes Grandfather Mole would speak to Mrs. Robin, or her husband; for he could hear them talking. And when you hear anybody in a garden exclaiming, "Oh, here's a big one! The children will like him, if I can ever pull him loose!" you may know at once that the speaker is talking about an angleworm. There can be no mistake about it.

When Grandfather Mole overheard Mrs. Robin making such a remark he would quite likely advise her to "try a smaller one."

Such a suggestion only made Mrs. Robin pull all the harder.

"Grandfather Mole wants all the big ones himself," she would splutter as soon as she and her husband were where Grandfather Mole couldn't listen to what she said. And then, probably, Jolly Robin would laugh and tell her not to mind, for there ought to be worms enough for everybody.

More than once, when Grandfather Mole had advised her to "try a smaller one," Mrs. Robin had declared afterward that she wished she could catch the biggest angleworm in the whole garden, just to spite old Grandfather Mole and teach him that other people had their rights, as well as he.

"Well, well!" Jolly Robin always exclaimed with a laugh. "Well, well! Perhaps some day you will find the grandfather of all the angleworms!"