COMMUTER'S WIFE 295 



especially if the term is allowed, as it must be, 

 to cover the inefficient. The illustrations in point 

 usually come to me from the hospital or the fac- 

 tory cottages, but once again the offenders belong 

 to the world of garden birds. Those poor mis- 

 guided song sparrows have built their third nest, 

 three feet above ground in a bush of golden glow, 

 at the junction of a twisted stalk with the support- 

 ing string and stake! This morning I well-nigh 

 dumped out the four eggs in trying to straighten 

 the plant. 



I had a mind to leave them to their fate, but who 

 would risk the lives of four possible song sparrows 

 that may return and bring joy to a gloomy March 

 day, for the sake of giving their parents a moral 

 lesson ? 



Not Barbara, surely, so I made a very neat struc- 

 ture of double mosquito net, a sort of skeleton nest, 

 and fastened it by the corners to four slender bam- 

 boo stakes, very much as a redwing blackbird hangs 

 his home between the reeds. 



With Bertie's aid I slipped it under the toppling 

 nest so that it was made secure without altering its 

 location. The sparrows did not seem alarmed in the 

 slightest, and this afternoon they are alternately 

 brooding and feeding cheerfully upon the crumbs of 



