104 DUTY IN FEATHERS. 
managed to tumble forth, one on top of the 
other, he shivered in his brain also. 
Then one morning came a change to their 
lives. The pale, watery-blue eggs had hatched 
out, and the appalling-looking results—seven 
of them—demanded food, not at once, but 
before; and then food, and more food till 
further orders. 
Mr Starling fled on little, sharp, whirring 
wings straight to the nearest meadow. Here, 
all among the cloth of gold and green plush— 
the carpet of buttercups and new grass—he 
hunted with the feverish haste of his kind, but 
alone. 
He dug at the roots of the grass with open, 
sharp beak. He dug at the rate of several 
digs per minute, running hither and thither 
as though mad, and—getting nothing, you 
would have said when you saw him stop 
every now and then to straighten up and 
stare around. 
In the wild, it may be mentioned, nearly 
all creatures have to stop and look round at 
intervals ; they might be suddenly slain else. 
When he rose and hurried back to the nest 
he had only three big grubs— leather-jackets,’ 
men call them, but they turn into daddy-long- 
legs in due course—in his pointed yellow 
beak, 
