CHAPTER I

OVERTURE BY THE BIRDS

  “We would have you to wit, that on eggs though we sit,
    And are spiked on the spit, and are baked in a pan;
  Birds are older by far than your ancestors are,
    And made love and made war, ere the making of man!”

  (Andrew Lang.)

A party of Swallows perched on the telegraph wires beside the highway where it passed Orchard Farm.  They were resting after a breakfast of insects, which they had caught on the wing, after the custom of their family.  As it was only the first of May they had plenty of time before nest-building, and so were having a little neighborly chat.

If you had glanced at these birds carelessly, you might have thought they were all of one kind; but they were not.  The smallest was the Bank Swallow, a sober-hued little fellow, with a short, sharp-pointed tail, his back feathers looking like a dusty brown cloak, fastened in front by a neck-band between his light throat and breast.

Next to him perched the Barn Swallow, a bit larger, with a tail like an open pair of glistening scissors and his face and throat a beautiful ruddy buff.  There were so many glints of color on his steel-blue back and wings, as he spread them in the sun, that it seemed as if in some of his nights he must have collided with a great soap-bubble, which left its shifting hues upon him as it burst.

This Barn Swallow was very much worried about something, and talked so fast to his friend the Tree Swallow, that his words sounded like twitters and giggles; but you would know they were words, if you could only understand them.

The Tree Swallow wore a greenish-black cloak and a spotless white vest.  He was trying to be polite and listen to the Barn Swallow as well as to the Purple Martin (the biggest Swallow of all), who was a little further along on the wire; but as they both spoke at once, he found it a difficult matter.

“We shall all be turned out, I know,” complained the Barn Swallow, “and after we have as good as owned Orchard Farm these three years, it is too bad.  Those meddlesome House People have put two new pieces of glass in the hayloft window, and how shall I ever get in to build my nest?”

“They may leave the window open,” said the Bank Swallow soothingly, for he had a cheerful disposition; “I have noticed that hayloft windows are usually left open in warm weather.”

“Yes, they may leave it open, and then shut it some day after I have gone in,” snapped Barney, darting off the perch to catch a fly, and grasping the wire so violently on his return, that the other birds fluttered and almost lost their footing.  “What is all this trouble about?” asked the Martin in his soft rich voice.  “I live ten miles further up country, and only pass here twice a year, so that I do not know the latest news.  Why must you leave the farm?  It seems to be a charming place for Bird People.  I see a little box under the barn eaves that would make me a fine house.”