y so old
as one thousand years, and birds of this sort have been building much
longer than that. No, so far as color went, Mother Nomer might have
chosen a spot in an open field, where there were little broken sticks or
stones to give it a mottled look--such a place, indeed, as her ancestors
used to find for their nesting in the old days when there were no
houses. Such a place, too, as most of this kind of bird still seek; for
not all of them, by any means, are roof-dwellers in cities.

Our bird with the dappled feathers, however, sat in one little spot on
that large roof for about sixteen days and nights, with time enough off
now and then to get food and water, and to exercise her wings. When she
was away, Mis came and sat on the same spot. If you had been there to
see them come and go, you would have wondered why they cared about that
particular spot. It looked like the rest of the sunny roof--just little
humps of light and dark. Ah, yes! but two of those little humps of light
and dark were not pebbles: they were eggs; and if you couldn't have
found them, Mis and his mate could, though I think even they had to
remember where they were instead of eye-spying them.

By the time sixteen days were over, there were no longer eggs beneath
the fluffy feathers that had covered them. Instead, there were two
little balls of down, though you couldn't have seen them either, unless
you had been about near enough to touch them; for the downy children of
Mis were as dappled as his mate and her eggs, and they had, from the
moment of their hatching, the instinct for keeping still if danger came
near.

[Illustration: _Peaceful enough, indeed, had been the brooding days._]

Peaceful enough, indeed, had been the brooding days of Mother Nomer.
Something of the noise and bustle, to be sure, of the city streets came
up to her; but that was from far below, and things far off are not worth
worrying about. Sometimes, too, the sound of voices floated out from
the upper windows of the building, quite near; but the birds soon became
used to that.

When the twins were but a few days old, however, their mother had a real
scare. A man came up to take down some electric wires that had been
fastened not far from the spot that was the Nomer home. He tramped
heavily about, throwing down his tools here and there, and whistling
loudly as he worked. All this frightened little Mother Nomer. There is
no doubt about that, for her heart beat more and more