has poor Dowsy
done? I thought you were afraid of her, Ranna, and now you look ready to
take her by the horns, and are frightened at two poor little robins
flying overhead."

"No, I ain't. Nor I won't mind Teazle even if he is going to bite
my--my--my head off," cried Ranna, pale with fright, as the dog ran his
nose into her face.

Will called Teazle away, while he and Almy tried very hard not to laugh.

"What have you got under the leaves?" asked Will, while Almy stooped
over Ranna, and said, tenderly,

"Show us your treasure, darling, and we won't tell Teazle, nor Dowsy,
nor anybody a word about it."

[Illustration: THE FALLEN NEST.--DRAWN BY S. G. MCCUTCHEON.]

Ranna sat up, brushed away the leaves, and took from under them a pretty
little nest full of young robins. "They're my own baby birds, and I
thought Dowsy would step on them," she said. "I found them just before I
ran to bring you, only the nest was in a great, ugly, dark bush, where
the poor little birdies couldn't feel any sun shinin', and I brung them
here, and tovered them with leaves, so the chittens wouldn't frighten
them while I was gone. What are those big birds flying round me for?
Tover my birdies up again; they are crying 'cause they are frightened."

"Hi! ho! hum! Harry!" exclaimed Will. "Those two birds are the excited
and anxious parents of your baby birdies, Ranna, and they feel just
about as comfortable as your father and mother would feel if a great
giant--" But Will remembered suddenly that poor little Ranna had no
mother, and, blushing fiery red, said: "I'm a good-for-nothing old
blunderbuss. You tell her, Almy; it's girl's talk, anyway."

Almy, with her arms around her little cousin, explained the situation.
Ranna eagerly pointed out the exact spot from which she had taken the
nest, and when Will had carefully restored it, watched with great
delight the old birds return to it.

"I'll never touch another nest in my life," she said; and holding one
arm tight around Almy's neck, she beckoned to Will with the other.
Putting it around him, she drew his head close down to Almy's, and
whispered: "_I_ don't think you're a _bundlefuss_, Will. I think you and
Almy know just as well how to take care of little birds when their papas
and mammas can't find them, as you do of little girls when their mammas
is--is--is lost. And I'm going to tell all the children in the world
that when they lose their mammas, the best thing they can do is to find