BIRD AND ARBOUR DAY AT FOXES CORNERS 395 
This is the little story that Miss Wilde read them, and 
they were very anxious as to what schoolhouse and 
children she really meant, but she said that was a secret. 
THE BIRDS AND THE TREES 
It was May Day. Half a dozen birds had collected in 
an old apple tree, which stood in a pasture close by the 
road that passed the schoolhouse; some of them had not 
met for many months, consequently a wave of conversa- 
tion rippled through the branches. 
“You were in a great hurry, the last time I saw you,” 
said the little black-and-white Downy Woodpecker to 
the Brown Thrasher, who was pluming his long tail, ex- 
claiming now and then because the feathers would not 
lie straight. 
“Indeed! When? Ido not remember. What was I 
doing?” 
“Tt was the last of October; a cold storm was blowing 
up, and you were starting on your southern trip in such 
a haste that you did not hear me call ‘good by’ from 
this same tree, where I was picking insect eggs that 
expected to hide safely in the bark all winter, only to 
hatch into all kinds of mischief in the spring. But I was 
too quick for them; my keen eyes spied them and my beak 
chiselled them out. Winter and summer I’m always at 
work, yet some house-people do not understand that I work 
for my living. They seem to think that a bird who does 
not sing is good for nothing but a target for them to 
shoot at.” 
“That is true,” said the dust-coloured Phoebe, dashing 
