ny at all. Now, the careful mother-bird knows this very well, and
she, therefore, divides everything among them, so that each has a bit
in turn, and while she feeds them she begs the rest to be as patient
as they can, and not flutter, and chirrup, and gape so widely, and
above all things, to mind they do not tumble, or push each other, over
the edge of the nest.

It happened one day that this very accident occurred in a
hedge-sparrow's nest which had been built in the largest branch of a
hawthorn-tree. This tree grew in the middle of a hedge that went round
a large field, where there were at this time a number of haymakers,
all very busy with the hay. While some were tossing the hay about in
order to spread it out in the sun and dry it, others were raking up
the hay that was already dry enough, and piling it up into haycocks.
Men and women, and boys and girls too, were all at work in this way,
and singing in the sun as they tossed the hay with forks, or raked it
up with large wooden rakes. When the hay was thus moved about on the
field, a frog sometimes jumped up, and went silently leaping away
towards the hedge; and sometimes a field-mouse sprang out from the
short grass, with a loud squeak, and ran off to hide himself in the
hedge, squeaking all the way, not because he was in the least hurt,
but because he had waked in a great fright.

At the same time that all this was going on, the sparrow, whose nest
was in the hawthorn-tree, had brought a few seeds and a morsel of
crust to her young ones. The seed she distributed with ease, but the
morsel of crust was rather hard, and required her to pinch and peck it
a good deal with her bill before it could be soft enough for the young
birds. The young ones, however, were all so anxious to be first to
receive the crust the moment it was ready, that they all began to
make a loud chirruping, and scrambling, and pushing, and fluttering,
and trampling, and climbing over each other, till at last two of them
were on the very edge of the nest, and had each got hold of the crust.
But the mother-bird did not approve of such rudeness, so she took it
away from them in her own bill just as the two were beginning to pull
with all their might, standing on opposite sides of the nest. They
could not recover themselves, but over they went, fluttering down into
the tree. One fell into the next bough below, but the other went
fluttering into the hedge under the tree. The mother helped the
neares