Frank looked thoughtful for a minute.  Then he said:  “A boy wants to have some fun with his gun.”

“It seems to me,” said the farmer, “that it would be more fun to shoot at a mark than to give pain to some living creature.  But a gun is a poor toy, at the best, Frank.  Ask your father for a good pair of opera-glasses, and study the birds instead of killing them.  We know very little yet about any of them.  See if you can’t bring me a bit of news about some of our feathered neighbors before the summer is over.  I’m a real bird-gossip, you know, and I’m always anxious to hear of what is going on in their homes.”

“All right, sir,” said Frank, smiling into his friend’s kindly eyes.  “I’m afraid it will be hard work to find out anything that you don’t know already, but I’ll try.”

Mr. Spencer drove on for a few minutes in silence.

“I never could understand why boys are always trying to hit something,” he said at last.  “When they haven’t an air-gun, they throw stones and snowballs.  I could tell you of some serious accidents from stone-throwing.  A little friend of mine was killed by falling from a horse which had been frightened by a snowball.  It is disgraceful that there should be no strict laws to forbid that kind of play.”

Robert’s cheeks and ears were beginning to burn.

“Father won’t give me an air-gun,” he said, presently.  “He says it will make me hard-hearted to kill anything—­even English sparrows.  But I thought all boys threw snowballs.”

“Perhaps they do,” said Mr. Spencer.  “I wish they could know some of the risks they run and the pain they give.  I have seen little girls come home from school, crying and hurt, and I knew they had been snowballed.”

“They were pretty mean boys who did that,” began Robert.  “We don’t throw snowballs at girls.”

“Tired old men and hard-working horses and other busy workers are not much better targets,” said Mr. Spencer, and again Robert’s cheeks flamed.  “Perhaps, however, your snowballs always go just where you intend to have them.  That makes it safer, of course.”

The farmer’s tone was so polite that Robert looked up suspiciously.  There was a twinkle in the kind, gray eyes.

“Now, Robert,” said Mr. Spencer, good-humoredly, “you have heard me preach a good many sermons since you came.  Let me tell you just one thing to remember.  Don’t do anything, to any living creature, which you wouldn’t enjoy if you were in its place.”

“Why, that’s the Golden Rule,” said Robert.

“I know it,” said the farmer, as he drove into the clean, pleasant yard, “but I never heard that the Golden Rule wouldn’t work wherever it was tried.”

APRIL SONG.

 Now willows have their pussies,
   Now ferns in meadow lands
 Hold little downy leaflets,
   Like clinging baby hands. 
 Like rosy baby fingers
   Show oak-leaves ’gainst the blue;
 The little ones of nature
   Are ev’rywhere in view.