e going
across the field to where the reapers are calling them to hurry along
with their dinners.

Such daily annoyances as this now determined the Bob Whites to take
refuge in the alder thicket, in whose deep seclusion they soon
regained tranquillity of spirits. The dampness of the situation,
however, proving most unfavorable to their brood, they anxiously
awaited the time when the departure of the reapers would restore quiet
and enable them to return to their haunts. At length the wished-for
time arrived; from the topmost boughs of the big maple Bob White could
see neither man, boy, or dog, in the whole length and breadth of the
field. Summoning the family together, they joyfully crept through the
brush to bask in the broad stretches of sunshine and to pick up the
scattered grain amid the stubble. Here they remained through all the
long summer days, their solitude broken only by the yellow butterflies
and by the big brown grasshoppers bumping about in the stubble, the
silence broken only by the occasional jangle from the bell-cow, as she
shook the deerflies from her sleek sides.

By and by, when the goldenrod was yellow upon the hillside, the young
ones, in their new brown coats, began to try their wings, and felt
very proud if they could make them whirr, when they rose to the fence
or to a low brush. Had they been boys, they would have been called
hobbledehoys; but, being Bob Whites, they were known as squealers, and
as such they felt very mannish and ambitious to be independent; but,
nevertheless, they still liked to huddle together at nightfall and
talk over the day's doings, close to, if not under, the mother's wing.

By and by, again, when goldenrod stood brown and sere upon the
hillside and the sumach glowed red in the fence corners and thickets,
when the fall crickets were chiming their dirge down amid the grass
roots and the air was growing frosty at nights, then the Bob Whites
grew restless and took flight for a far-off pea field, noted as a
feeding-ground. Here they met other families of kinsfolks, and then
began a right royal time, running nimbly through the rich pea vines or
scratching in sassafras or sumach thickets for insects, growing fat
and growing lazy all the time. The gourmand of the autumn was in
manner quite a contrast to the Bob Whites of the days of young wheat
and wild roses. No blithe, good music now issued from that throat so
intent upon good cheer. True, some unpleasant rumors are afloat