d.

"Try another drink," suggested Mrs. Finch pertly. Kate was her name, and
all Kates are saucy.

Solomon did try another drink, and it inspired him. "If," said he, "a
finch's nest is placed on the Serpentine it fills and breaks to pieces,
but a thrush's nest is still as dry as the cup of a swan's back."

How the thrushes applauded! Now they knew why they lined their nests
with mud, and when Mrs. Finch called out, "We don't place our nests on
the Serpentine," they did what they should have done at first: chased
her from the meeting. After this it was most orderly. What they had been
brought together to hear, said Solomon, was this: their young friend,
Peter Pan, as they well knew, wanted very much to be able to cross to
the Gardens, and he now proposed, with their help, to build a boat.

At this the thrushes began to fidget, which made Peter tremble for his
scheme.

Solomon explained hastily that what he meant was not one of the cumbrous
boats that humans use; the proposed boat was to be simply a thrush's
nest large enough to hold Peter.

But still, to Peter's agony, the thrushes were sulky. "We are very busy
people," they grumbled, "and this would be a big job."

"Quite so," said Solomon, "and, of course, Peter would not allow you
to work for nothing. You must remember that he is now in comfortable
circumstances, and he will pay you such wages as you have never been
paid before. Peter Pan authorises me to say that you shall all be paid
sixpence a day."

Then all the thrushes hopped for joy, and that very day was begun the
celebrated Building of the Boat. All their ordinary business fell into
arrears. It was the time of year when they should have been pairing, but
not a thrush's nest was built except this big one, and so Solomon soon
ran short of thrushes with which to supply the demand from the mainland.
The stout, rather greedy children, who look so well in perambulators
but get puffed easily when they walk, were all young thrushes once, and
ladies often ask specially for them. What do you think Solomon did? He
sent over to the housetops for a lot of sparrows and ordered them to lay
their eggs in old thrushes' nests and sent their young to the ladies and
swore they were all thrushes! It was known afterward on the island as
the Sparrows' Year, and so, when you meet, as you doubtless sometimes
do, grown-up people who puff and blow as if they thought themselves
bigger than they are, very likely they belong to t