ve in. Mrs. Otus was not, indeed, a tidy housekeeper. The floor
was dirty--very dirty--and was never slicked up from one week's end to
another. But then, Solomon didn't mind. He was used to it. Mrs. Otus was
just like his own mother in that respect; and it might have worried him
a great deal to have to keep things spick and span after the way he had
been brought up. Why, the beautiful white eggshell he hatched out of was
dirty when he pipped it, and never in all his growing-up days did he see
his mother or father really clean house. So it is no wonder he was
rather shiftless and easy-going. Neither of them had shown what might be
called by some much ambition when they went house-hunting early that
spring; for although the place they chose had been put into fairly good
repair by rather an able carpenter,--a woodpecker,--still, it had been
lived in before, and might have been improved by having some of the
rubbish picked up and thrown out. But do you think Solomon spent any of
his precious evenings that way? No, nor Mrs. Otus either. They moved in
just as it was, in the most happy-go-lucky sort of way.

Well, whatever a crow or other particular person might think of that
nest, we should agree that a father and mother owl must be left to
manage affairs for their young as Nature has taught them; and if those
five adorable babies of Solomon didn't prove that the way they were
brought up was an entire success from an owlish point of view, I don't
know what could.

[Illustration: _Those five adorable babies of Solomon._]

Take them altogether, perhaps you could not find a much more interesting
family than the little Otuses. As to size and shape, they were as much
alike as five peas in a pod; but for all that, they looked so different
that it hardly seemed possible that they could be own brothers and
sisters. For one of the sons of Solomon and two of his daughters had
gray complexions, while the other son and daughter were reddish brown.
Now Solomon and Mrs. Otus were both gray, except, of course, what white
feathers and black streaks were mixed up in their mottlings and dapples;
so it seems strange enough to see two of their children distinctly
reddish. But, then, one never can tell just what color an owl of this
sort will be, anyway. Solomon himself, though gray, was the son of a
reddish father and a gray mother, and he had one gray brother and two
reddish sisters: while Mrs. Otus, who had but one brother and one
sister, wa