the house in a very careless fashion.
For instance, if he happened to notice a bit of moss--or a
burr--clinging to his coat, just as likely as not he would brush it
off and let it fall upon the floor. And when Mrs. Rusty found
anything like that in her cottage, she always knew how it came
there.

Rusty sometimes remarked that it was a good thing he didn't smoke.

"How would you like it if I dropped bits of tobacco, or ashes, and
maybe burnt matches for you to pick up?" he asked his wife.

"You couldn't come inside my house if you used tobacco," she always
replied. And she would get quite excited at the mere thought of
such an untidy habit.

And then Rusty would smile--but he always took good care not to let
his wife see him.

"Don't worry!" he would say, if she became too stirred up. "I've
never smoked yet--and I never expect to."

One can see that Rusty Wren was somewhat of a tease. And as it
usually happens with people who amuse themselves at the expense of
others, there came a time when Rusty's teasing landed him in
trouble.

One day after he had come home from an excursion to the pasture (he
seldom strayed so far from home as that!), Mrs. Rusty began
sniffing the air. Her nose would have wrinkled--only it couldn't,
because it was so hard. She looked at her husband suspiciously. And
it seemed to her that he had a guilty manner.

"I declare," she said, "I believe you've been smoking." And she
started to scold so angrily that Rusty Wren knew she must be in a
temper.

Seeing signs of trouble, Rusty began to fidget. And he moved about
so uneasily that his wife was all the surer of his guilt. She
stopped right in the middle of her scolding to say, "I smell
smoke!"

"Perhaps you do," Rusty admitted. "But it's certainly not tobacco
smoke."

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "Then you've been smoking corn-silk, or
hayseed--and that's almost as bad."

But Rusty said that it must be the smoke of a pine stump that she
noticed.

"Farmer Green is burning some old stumps in the pasture," he
explained. "And I flew through a cloud of it."

Just then he happened to notice a bit of something or other
clinging to one of his tail feathers. And though his wife was
looking straight at him, he flicked the tiny scrap upon the floor,
without thinking what he was doing.

"There you go again!" Mrs. Rusty Wren cried. "Here I've just
finished cleaning the house and you're littering it all up! You
don't care how much work you make for