speak he yawned again.
And then, without realizing what he was doing, he tucked his head
under his wing and fell asleep on the limb of the cedar tree where he
was sitting.

Willie Whip-poor-will looked at him in astonishment.

"What shocking manners!" he exclaimed. "He went to sleep while we were
talking. But I suppose he knows no better."

Willie would have liked to know what Jolly Robin was going to say
about his singing. But he was so hungry that he left Jolly asleep upon
his perch and hurried off to look for more insects.

Since it was a moonlight night, Willie Whip-poor-will spent all the
time until sunrise in hunting for food. Now and then he stopped to
rest and sing his queer song, which Jolly Robin did not like.

But Jolly Robin slept so soundly that for once Willie's singing never
disturbed him at all.

XXIII

A COLD GREETING

When Jolly Robin awoke a little before dawn, after his night in the
woods, he did not know at first where he was.

Now, it happened that just as he was awaking in the cedar tree, Willie
Whip-poor-will was going to sleep on the ground right beneath him. So
when Jolly at last looked down and spied his friend, he remembered
what had happened.

"My goodness!" he said with a nervous laugh. "I fell asleep here last
night! And I wonder what my wife will say when I get home." He would
have liked to try to rouse Willie Whip-poor-will and speak to him
about learning the new song. But he was so uneasy on account of what
his wife might say about his having stayed away from home all night
that he flew away as fast as he could go.

It was exactly as he had feared. When he reached his house in the
orchard his wife greeted him quite coldly. In fact, she hardly spoke
to him at all. And when Jolly told her, with a good many chuckles,
what a joke he had played on himself--falling asleep as he had, while
making a call upon Willie Whip-poor-will--she did not even smile.

"I should think you would be ashamed of yourself," she told him.
"Willie Whip-poor-will is a good-for-nothing rascal. Everybody talks
about the way he prowls through the woods all night and seldom goes to
bed before morning. And his wife is no better than he is. They're too
shiftless even to build themselves a nest. Mrs. Whip-poor-will leaves
her eggs on the ground. And that's enough to know about _her_.

"If you like to spend your time with such trash you'd better go over
to the woods and live," Mrs. Robin said. And