ropped it, and picked it up again and again and clucked,
then swallowed it. The young ones stood around, then one little yellow
fellow, the one that sat on the chip, picked up an ant-egg, dropped it
a few times, then yielding to a sudden impulse, swallowed it, and so had
learned to eat. Within twenty minutes even the runt bad learned, and a
merry time they had scrambling after the delicious eggs as their mother
broke open more ant-galleries, and sent them and their contents rolling
down the bank, till every little partridge had so crammed his little
crop that he was positively misshapen and could eat no more.

Then all went cautiously up the stream, and on a sandy bank, well
screened by brambles, they lay for all that afternoon, and learned how
pleasant it was to feel the cool powdery dust running between their hot
little toes. With their strong bent for copying, they lay on their sides
like their mother and scratched with their tiny feet and flopped with
their wings, though they had no wings to flop with, only a little tag
among the down on each side, to show where the wings would come. That
night she took them to a dry thicket near by, and there among the crisp,
dead leaves that would prevent an enemy's silent approach on foot, and
under the interlacing briers that kept off all foes of the air, she
cradled them in their feather-shingled nursery and rejoiced in the
fulness of a mother's joy over the wee cuddling things that peeped in
their sleep and snuggled so trustfully against her warm body.

II

The third day the chicks were much stronger on their feet. They
no longer had to go around an acorn; they could even scramble over
pine-cones, and on the little tags that marked the places for their
wings, were now to be seen blue rows of fat blood-quills.

Their start in life was a good mother, good legs, a few reliable
instincts, and a germ of reason. It was instinct, that is, inherited
habit, which taught them to hide at the word from their mother; it was
instinct that taught them to follow her, but it was reason which made
them keep under the shadow of her tail when the sun was smiting down,
and from that day reason entered more and more into their expanding
lives.

Next day the blood-quills had sprouted the tips of feathers. On the
next, the feathers were well Out, and a week later the whole family of
down-clad babies were strong on the wing.

And yet not all--poor little Runtie had been sickly from the first. He