18 LITTLE INNOCENTS. 
and peck off several pieces; whereupon the 
tits turned into the likeness of very big, 
angry wasps, swooping and whirring about 
the sparrow’s head to such good purpose 
that she retired. 
Nobody saw the great tits. They were 
hanging about in the shadows, climbing— 
more mouse-like than ever—in the depths of 
the box-hedge under the evergreen trees. 
But they saw everybody else. They were 
larger than the blue tits by one and a half 
inches, and had black and silver where the 
others were blue. They were starving. 
As darkness fell the blue tits vanished to 
some secret roosting-place of their own; and 
in the haze of dusk, just in the last glimmer 
of day, a great tit showed faintly, hanging 
upside-down from the bottom of the suet. 
Nobody saw it there. 
Dawn was slow in coming on a chill day. 
There were sleety squalls driving from the 
north-west, and even the Spartan mistle- 
thrushes had suspended nest-building opera- 
tions in the fork of the leafless apple-tree. 
Wherefore the blue tits were late in appear- 
ing. But when they did, they nearly went 
mad. 
A great tit—his black gorget plainly visible 
—was glued to the suet upside-down, feeding 
