_was_ surprised, for all that he
saw was a grayish bird with "two lovely black eyes," not by any means
as large as a blackbird. When it flew it kept low, with a weak and
peculiar flight that was deceiving; and when Mrs. Blackie, following
it, and yelling like several shrews, got too close, it turned its head,
and said, "Wark! wark!" in a harsh and warning way.

Blackie joined in with his deeper "Twoit-twoit-twoit!" just by way of
lending official dignity to the proceedings. Whereupon his wife,
feeling that he had backed her up, redoubled her excitement and shrill
abuse.

And they spent two solid hours at this fool's game, helped by a robin,
a blue tit, and a chaffinch or two--the chaffinch must have his finger
in every pie--following that gray bird from nowhere, while it moved
about the garden in its shuffling flight, or alternately sat and
scowled at them. But it must be admitted that Blackie himself looked
rather bored, and might have gone off for breakfast any time, if he had
dared.

As a matter of fact, however, the bird did not stand upon the Register
of Bad Deeds as being a terror of even the mildest kind of blackbirds.
Red-backed shrike was her name, female was her sex, and from Africa had
she come. Goodness knows where she was going, but not far, probably;
and the largest thing in the bird line she appeared able to tackle was
something of the chaffinch size. But, all the same, Mrs. Blackie
seemed jolly well certain that she knew better.

Then arrived the bombshell.

One of the Blackie youngsters, stump-tailed, frog-mouthed, blundering,
foolish, gawky, and squawking, landed, all of a heap, right into the
very middle of the picnic-party.

Mrs. Blackie very nearly had a fit on the spot, and the shrike judged
that the time had about arrived for her to quit that vicinity.

Blackie himself, to do him justice, kept cool enough to do nothing.
Wives will say that he was just husband all over, but there were
reasons abroad. One of them shot past Blackie, who was low down, a
second later and a yard away, and had he not been absolutely still, and
therefore as invisible as one of the most conspicuous of birds in the
wild can be, he would have known in that instant, or the next, what
lies upon the other side of death.

Another reason shot through the lower hedge, and, both together, they
fell upon the young bird.

They were the cat of the house and her half-grown kitten, and they were
upon the unhappy youngs