es; and still on and on flew the
sweet-voiced bird, crying that summer had come again with its hedge-side
flowers and sweet-scented gales, bonny meadows, golden with the glossy
buttercups, while nodding cowslips peeped from their verdant beds.
"Cuckoo!" cried the bird, and away he flew again over the rich green
pasture, where the lowing cows lazily browsed amongst the rich
cream-giving grass, or crouched in their fresh, sweet banqueting-hall,
and idly ruminated with half-shut eyes, flapping their great widespread
ears to get rid of some early fly. And, still rejoicing in his liberty,
the bird cried "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" over vale and lea.

CHAPTER FOUR.

"PEEDLE-WEEDLE-WEE."

"There, only hark at that," said Mrs Flutethroat; "who can possibly go
to sleep with that noise going on--ding, ding, dinging in one's ears?"
saying which the good dame took her head from beneath her wing, and
smoothed down her feathers as she spoke. "There never was such a
nuisance as those bottle-tits anywhere."

The noise that Mrs Flutethroat complained of proceeded from the low
branches of a large fir-tree; and as the good dame listened the sounds
came again louder than ever, "Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," in
a small, thready, pipy tone, as though the birds who uttered the cry had
had their voices split up into two or three pieces.

"Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," cried a row of little
long-tailed birds, so small that they looked like little balls of
feathers, with tiny black eyes and a black beak--so small that it was
hardly worth calling a beak at all--stuck at one point, and a thin tail
at the other extreme.

"Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," they kept crying, which
meant,--"Let me come inside where it's warm;" and as they kept on
whining the same cry, the outside birds kept flitting over the backs of
those next to them, and trying to get a middle place. Then the next two
did the same, and the next, and the next, until they all had done the
same thing, when they began again; and all the while that wretched,
querulous piping "peedle-weedle-wee" kept on, till Mrs Flutethroat grew
so angry, and annoyed and irritable, that she felt as though she could
have thrown one of her eggs at the tiresome little intruders on the
peace of the garden.

"Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," said the bottle-tits as busy as
ever, trying to get the warmest spot.

"There they go again," said Mrs Flutethroat; "why don't you go