EVE AND PETRO 



had buried? Well, that's much the way Petro bunted 

 his plaster smooth — rooted it into place with the top of 

 his closed beak. He got his face dirty doing it, too, even 

 the pretty pale feather crescent moon on his forehead. 

 But that did n't matter. Trowels, if they do useful 

 work, have to get dirty doing it, and Petro did n't stop 

 because of that. If he had, his nest would have been as 

 rough on the inside as it was outside, where a humpy 

 little lump showed for each mouthful of plaster. 



Although Eve and Petro did not fly off to the plaster 

 pit together, they did not go alone, for there was a whole 

 colony of swallows building under the eaves of that same 

 barn ; and while some of them stayed and plastered, the 

 rest flew forth for a fresh supply. 



They knew the place, every one of them; and swiftly 

 over the meadow and over the marsh they flew, until 

 they came to a pasture. There, near a spring where the 

 cows had trampled the ground until it was oozy and the 

 water stood in tiny pools in their hoofprints, the swal- 

 lows stopped. They put down their beaks into the mud 

 and gathered it in their mouths; and all the time they 

 held their wings quivering up over their beautiful blue 

 backs, hke a flock of butterflies just alighting with their 

 wings atremble. 



So their plaster pit was just a mud-puddle. Yes, that 

 is all; only it had to be a particularly sticky kind of mud, 



71 ■ 



