'll be nothing left of you except a cloud of feathers!"

XXI

HOW TO TAKE BAD NEWS

FOR once Bobby Bobolink's heart seemed to come right up into his mouth.
Usually he never let anything dash his high spirits. If matters didn't
go exactly as they should with him he would laugh and say that probably
they would be different to-morrow. And more likely than not he would
burst into the jolliest song he knew. Singing like that always helped
him amazingly, when a good many people would have moped and looked glum.
But now the gloomy warning of Jolly Robin's mournful cousin, the Hermit
Thrush, threw a sudden dread into him.

"Why"--he asked the Hermit in a quavering voice--"why do you think I'm
likely to explode some day when I'm singing?"

"I don't _think_ that. I _know_ it," the Hermit corrected him. "No
bird can crowd one note upon another the way you do without running
a terrible risk. If you don't do differently, some fine day your
wife is going to miss you. And when the neighbors search for you,
and find nothing but a few feathers scattered on the ground, they'll
know what has happened to you."

Bobby Bobolink actually began to tremble as the Hermit described the
terrible end that awaited him. He was so alarmed that all he could say
was, "My goodness!"

"I thought I ought to tell you," the Hermit went on. "I thought maybe
you didn't understand. And now that you've a wife and children, too,
of course you ought to take care of yourself. You won't want any such
accident to happen to you."

"No, indeed!" Bobby Bobolink assured him. "And you must tell me how I
can sing fast--as I always do--and yet do it safely."

"Ah!" the Hermit exclaimed. "That can't be done. You must sing more
slowly, as I do. Take plenty of time for every note. And above all,
don't sing very often!"

"Oh! I never could sing that way!" Bobby Bobolink cried. "I have to sing
joyful songs. And you know you always sing that kind in quick time."

"Pardon me!" said the Hermit, who was a most polite person. "I never
sing joyful songs. So you see you are mistaken."

"Well, if you sang the sort I do you'd know that they have to be given
in a lively fashion," Bobby told him. "I don't see how it would be
possible to make a song sound merry if it had to be sung slowly."

The Hermit pondered over that speech.

"There's only one thing for you to do," he said at last. "You must
select only mournful songs.... You know you sing them in slow time."