Chapter 4 - Page 2

horse-hair."

"What's that?" Peter's voice sounded as it he suspected that Johnny Chuck was trying to fool him.

"It's a fact," said Johnny, nodding his head gravely. "Goodness knows where they find it these days, but find it they do. Here comes Chippy himself; ask him."

Chippy and Mrs. Chippy came flitting from tree to tree until they were on a branch right over Peter and Johnny. "Hello!" cried Peter. "You folks seem very busy. Haven't you finished building your nest yet?"

"Nearly," replied Chippy. "It is all done but the horsehair. We are on our way up to Farmer Brown's barnyard now to look for some. You haven't seen any around anywhere, have you?"

Peter and Johnny shook their heads, and Peter confessed that he wouldn't know horsehair if he saw it. He often had found hair from the coats of Reddy Fox and Old Man Coyote and Digger the Badger and Lightfoot the Deer, but hair from the coat of a horse was altogether another matter.

"It isn't hair from the coat of a horse that we want," cried Chippy, as he prepared to fly after Mrs. Chippy. "It is long hair form the tail or mane of a horse that we must have. It makes the very nicest kind of lining for a nest."

Chippy and Mrs. Chippy were gone a long time, but when they did return each was carrying a long black hair. They had found what they wanted, and Mrs. Chippy was in high spirits because, as she took pains to explain to Peter, that little nest would not soon be ready for the four beautiful little blue eggs with black spots on one end she meant to lay in it.

"I just love Chippy and Mrs. Chippy," said Peter, as they watched their two little feathered friends putting the finishing touches to the little nest far out on a branch of one of the apple-trees.

"Everybody does," replied Johnny. "Everybody loves them as much as they hate Bully and his wife. Did you know that they are sometimes called Tree Sparrows? I suppose it is because they so often build their nests in trees?"

"No," said Peter, "I didn't. Chippy shouldn't be called Tree Sparrow, because he has a cousin by that name."

Johnny Chuck looked as if he doubted that, "I never heard of him," he grunted.

Peter grinned. Here was a chance to tell Johnny Chuck something, and Peter never is happier than when he can tell folks something they don't know. "You'd know him if you didn't sleep all winter," said Peter. "Dotty the Tree Sparrow spends the winter here. He left for his home in the Far North about the time you took it into your head to wake up."

"Why do you call him Dotty?" asked Johnny Chuck.

"Because he has a little round black dot right in the middle of his breast," replied Peter. "I don't know why they