ne
Finch:

"Shake a lot of 'em down--there's a good fellow!"

Mr. Pine Finch fluttered to a perch on a limb and looked down in great
surprise.

"Did you speak?" he inquired.

"Yes!" Dickie Deer Mouse piped up. "You know, I can climb a tree; but I
can't crawl out to the tips of the branches, because I'm too heavy. So
you'll oblige me if you'll drop a few dozen more of those buds."

The request surprised Mr. Pine Finch. His face told that much.

"_Buds!_" he exclaimed. "Why do you want _buds_?"

"I eat them--when I can get them," Dickie Deer Mouse informed him.

The streaked gentleman in the tree looked quite blank.

"What a strange thing to do!" he cried through his nose--or so it
seemed.

"Strange!" Dickie Deer Mouse echoed. "Why, you've just been eating some
yourself!" And he couldn't help thinking that Mr. Pine Finch was even
odder than he sounded.

"That's so," Mr. Pine Finch admitted. "In fact, I may say that I'm very,
very fond of tree-buds. But I'm a bird. And of course everybody knows
that you're a rodent."

"I'm hungry, anyway," Dickie Deer Mouse retorted. He didn't mind Mr.
Finch's calling him names, if only he would drop some more buds.

"You're hungry, eh?" the odd gentleman in the tree replied. "That
reminds me that I'm still hungry myself. So I can't stop to talk with
you any longer just now."

Then he turned himself upside down, as he picked out a promising
cluster of buds. And before he had finished his breakfast he had dropped
so many buds that Dickie Deer Mouse called to him and thanked him for
his kindness.

"What! Are you still there?" Mr. Pine Finch exclaimed, gazing down at
Dickie as if he were greatly surprised to see him lingering beneath the
tree. "I must go away now," Mr. Pine Finch added. "But I'll make this
remark before I leave: If you have anything more to say to me, you can
find me here almost any morning soon after daybreak." And then he flew
off.

Dickie Deer Mouse told himself that he was in luck. By coming to that
spot early every day he could pick up buds enough--dropped carelessly by
Mr. Pine Finch--to feed himself until spring came and the snow melted
and uncovered the ground, where he knew he could find food.

So he went home and slept as he had not slept for weeks. And the next
morning, when he went back to the tree where he had found Mr. Pine
Finch, his eighteen cousins followed him. For Dickie Deer Mouse told
them of his good fortune and asked them to share