Redroff 



mother ; it was instinct that taught them to follow 

 her, but it was reason which made them keep 

 under the shadow of her tail when the sun was 

 smiting down, and from that day reason entered 

 more and more into their expanding lives. 



Next day the blood-quills had sprouted the 

 tips of feathers. On the next, the feathers were 

 well out, and a week later the whole family of 

 down-clad babies were strong on the wing. 



And yet not all — poor little Runtie had been 

 sickly from the first. He bore his half-shell on 

 his back for hours after he came out ; he ran less 

 and cheeped more than his brothers, and when 

 one evening at the onset of a skunk the mother 

 gave the word ' Kwit, kwit' (Fly, fly), Runtie 

 was left behind, and when she gathered her 

 brood on the piney hill he was missing, and 

 they saw him no more. 



Meanwhile, their training had gone on. They 

 knew that the finest grasshoppers abounded in 

 the long grass by the brook ; they knew that the 

 currant-bushes dropped fatness in the form of 

 smooth, green worms; they knew that the 

 dome of an ant-hill rising against the distant 

 woods stood for a garner of plenty j they knew 



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