h
life and energy, been discovered. Two birds busied with arranging their
nest could not have been more completely content.

"If this goes on," said the children's mother, laughing, when they did
condescend to come in to tea, "I think we had better send a mattress and
a pillow up to your seat, and let you stay there all night."

Ted and Cissy smiled, and in their hearts I rather think they were of
opinion that what their mother proposed would be very nice. But, eager
as they were, they were both very hungry, and it was evident that living
in a tree did not destroy their appetite, for the quantity of slices
of bread and butter which disappeared would have alarmed any one
unaccustomed to the feats of little people in that way.

And tea over, off they set again. It was almost as if they were away on
a visit somewhere, the house seemed so quiet, and the garden, so often
at that time of day the scene of tremendous romps in which even nurse
herself was coaxed to join, quite deserted. _Unless_--that is to
say--you had passed under a certain tree and stood still to listen to
the clatter going on overhead, though, thanks to the leafy branches,
there was nothing to be _seen_.

"Can there be magpies up in that tree?" would, I think, have been your
first idea. And then, listening a little more attentively, you would
have come to think that whether human or feathered they were very funny
magpies indeed.

"Fifteen, _sixteen_, that makes. Hurrah, sixteen dogs since ten o'clock
this morning. And, let's see, seven old women with baskets, and----"

"Them wasn't all _old_," corrects the small voice of magpie number two;
"Jessie wif the eggs isn't old."

"Never mind; if they've got baskets they _should_ be old," replies
Ted. "An old woman with a basket _sounds_ right. Then there's five
p'rambulators, oh, it _is_ a long word to spell--it goes right out of
its place into the other rows. I wish I'd just put 'babies in p'rams.'
And then there's three pigs and horses, oh dear I can't count how many.
It's getting too dark to see the strokes on the paper. I say, Cissy,
just you get down and run in and ask for two or three dips. We can stick
them up on the wall and have a beautiful lighting up, and then we can
see everybody that passes."

Down clambered obedient Cissy--she was growing very alert by this time
at making her way up and down--off she set to the house with her
message.

"Dips, dips," she repeated to herself. "Ted says I'm to