“Yes,” said Olive, “it is their own color, and we give it a name; for it is called ‘robin’s-egg blue’ in our books.”

“The old birds had been sitting for ten days, and it was almost time for the little ones to come out, when one night there was a great wind and the grape vine, that was only fastened up with bits of leather and tacks, fell down in a heap.  In the morning there was the nest all in a tangle of vine down on the ground.  The vine must have swung down, for it hadn’t tipped the nest over, and the mother bird was sitting on it still.

“‘That will never do,’ said my mother; ’the first cat that strays by will take the poor thing.’  While I was looking at it mother went in the house and came back with a little tin pail.  She picked some branches and tied them round it so that the tin didn’t show.  ‘Now,’ she said to the Robin, the same as if it understood our language, ’get up and let me see if I can’t better you a bit.’  Then the bird left the nest, making a great fuss, and crying ‘quick! quick!’ as if all the woods were afire.

“‘Oh, mother!’ I cried, ’the eggs will get cold.  What are you taking the nest away for?  It was better to chance the cats.’

“‘Don’t you fret, sonny,’ said she; ’your mammy has some common sense if she don’t trampoose all over creation watching birds.’  And before I understood what she was doing she had put the nest in the top of the tin pail and hung it on a hook under the shed roof.  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘Mrs. Robin, try how you like that!’

“I watched and after a few minutes first one Robin flew under the shed and then the other, and the next thing one was sitting on the pail-nest as nice as you please!”

“Did the birds hatch?” asked Olive, Nat, and Dodo, almost in the same breath.

“Yes, they hatched all right; and then I noticed something funny.  The backs and breasts of the little birds were almost naked when they were hatched, and their eyes closed tight; but when the feathers came they were spotted on their backs and breasts and not plain like their parents.  Do you know,” added Rap after a little pause, “that when Bluebirds are little, their backs and breasts are speckled too, though afterward they moult out plain?  So there is something alike about Bluebirds and Robins that even a boy can see.”

“You are quite right,” said the Doctor; “the ’something alike, that even a boy can see,’ is one of the things that shows these birds to be cousins, as I told you.  Every one of the Silver-tongued Family is spotted when it gets its first feathers.  It is strange,” he added in an undertone, as if talking to himself, “how long it took some of us to find out what any bright boy can see.”

The American Robin—­Remember This

Length ten inches.

Upper parts slate color with a tinge of brown.

Head black on top and sides, with white spots around the eyes.  Tail black with white spots on the tips of some feathers.