130 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
but I kept mending the cradle as well as I could with 
thread which I bought of Mrs. Spider. I brought both 
of my children to the party with me.” 
“ Oh, I never take my children to a party,” said Mrs. 
Goldfinch. “TI leave them with their nurse.” 
Mrs. Goldfinch said this with a haughty air, which 
quite amused Mrs. Hummer. She knew very well that 
Mrs. Goldfinch kept no nurse, but took care of her 
children herself night and day. “ Very likely the cats 
will get them to-day,” Mrs. Hummer was thinking. 
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Warbler to Mrs. Cliff 
Swallow. “I did not know you had returned. Have 
you come to stay with us now?” 
“Oh, yes; I have come to stay,” answered Mrs. Cliff 
Swallow. ‘We have taken rooms under the barn 
eaves. We are just making a cradle for the young 
ones we hope to have by and by. We have had a 
hard time to get all the mud we wanted, and thought 
-we should be obliged to give up nest-making for this 
year. There was a nice puddle in the road where we 
were at work; you know we like road mud best, because 
it is so fine and sticky. When school let out, the small 
boys threw stones at us, hoping to hit some of us, I sup- 
pose, and so we had to go down to the river to get our 
mud, and that wasn’t half so good as the road mud.” 
“ That is too bad,” said Mrs. Warbler. 
Mrs. Cliff Swallow went on to say, “We have just 
heard such a slander about our family. Mrs. Owl told 
us. She overheard it outside of a window in the even- 
