n it would fall on the stones below. But their misfortunes had
finally taught the little architects wisdom. They brought hair from the
barnyard and mixed it with their mud, after the manner of mortar, and so
built a nest which successfully adhered.

All this Theodora told me as we stood watching them, coming and going
with cheery, ceaseless twitterings.

"And I think they've got a kind of reason about such things," Theodora
added with a certain tone of candid concession. "Although Gram says it
is only instinct. She doesn't like to have any one say that animals or
birds reason; she thinks it isn't Scriptural."

Just then Ellen came out with the dinner-horn which, after several
dissonant efforts, she succeeded in sounding, to call the Old Squire and
the boys from the field. Theodora and I were so greatly amused at the
odd sound that we burst out laughing; and Ellen, hearing us, was a good
deal mortified. "I don't care!" she exclaimed. "It goes awfully hard; I
haven't got breath enough to quite 'fill' it; and my lip isn't hard
enough. Ad says it takes practice to get up a lip for horn blowing."

Theodora tried it, and elicited a horrible blare. I did not succeed much
better; something seemed to be lacking in my lip, or my lungs. It
required a tremendous head of wind to make the old tube vibrate; at
last, I got it started a-roaring and made the whole countryside hideous
with an outlandish sort of blast. Theodora begged of me to desist.

"We shall have the neighborhood aroused and coming to see what the
matter is," she said. I was so much elated with my success, however,
that I blew a final roar; and just then Addison, Halstead, grandfather
and two hired men came upon the scene, over the wall from the field
side.

"What on earth are you trying to do with that horn?" Halstead called
out. "Do you think we are deaf? I never heard such a noise!"

"It is only our new cousin getting up his lip," said Ellen, scarcely
able to speak for laughing.

Grandfather told me that if they ever organized a brass band thereabout,
I should have the big French horn to play, for I seemed to have the
makings of a tremendous lip. All these little incidents of my first few
days at the farm are enduringly fixed in my memory.

The day proved a warm one; and after dinner I went into the front
sitting-room and looked at the old family pictures: grandfather's father
and mother in silhouette, General Scott's triumphant entry into the city
of Mexi