Featherland | Page 5

feathers, like a stupid old turkey-cock, till he looked so majestic and imposing, that it was decided at once that he must come into the cedar and try the foreigner, who would not have a chance to get off with such a judge before him.
Off went the owl with a heavy flap-flap, and across the garden to where the great cedar stood; and away went the birds with such a flutter, rustle, and bustle, that the whole air whistled again as they swept away.
"Now, then, bolster-brains," said the starling to the jackdaw, "why, you've been asleep!" And there, sure enough, had sat the daw with his head in his pocket, and one leg put away for the present until he wanted it again.
"Asleep! nonsense!" said the daw. "Pooh--tchah! who ever heard of such a thing? Only thinking, my dear sir--only thinking; and I think so much better with my eyes shut and the light shaded from them."
"Why, you depraved descendant of a corvine ancestor; you grey-headed old miscreant," exclaimed the blackbird, who had been to look at the prisoner, "what have you done with the foreigner?"
"Done," said the daw, "done with the foreigner! No, of course I have not done with the foreigner, any more than the rest of the company have."
"But where is he?" chorused several birds; "where is he?"
"Ah!" said Judge Shoutnight, "who-oo-oo--ere's the prisoner?"
Over the hills and far away, with voice cleared by sucking the little birds' eggs, and crying "Cuckoo," till the far-off woods rang back the echo from their golden green sides; and still on and on flew the sweet-voiced bird, crying that summer had come again with its hedge-side flowers and sweet-scented gales, bonny meadows, golden with the glossy buttercups, while nodding cowslips peeped from their verdant beds. "Cuckoo!" cried the bird, and away he flew again over the rich green pasture, where the lowing cows lazily browsed amongst the rich cream-giving grass, or crouched in their fresh, sweet banqueting-hall, and idly ruminated with half-shut eyes, flapping their great widespread ears to get rid of some early fly. And, still rejoicing in his liberty, the bird cried "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" over vale and lea.
CHAPTER FOUR.
"PEEDLE-WEEDLE-WEE."
"There, only hark at that," said Mrs Flutethroat; "who can possibly go to sleep with that noise going on--ding, ding, dinging in one's ears?" saying which the good dame took her head from beneath her wing, and smoothed down her feathers as she spoke. "There never was such a nuisance as those bottle-tits anywhere."
The noise that Mrs Flutethroat complained of proceeded from the low branches of a large fir-tree; and as the good dame listened the sounds came again louder than ever, "Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," in a small, thready, pipy tone, as though the birds who uttered the cry had had their voices split up into two or three pieces.
"Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," cried a row of little long-tailed birds, so small that they looked like little balls of feathers, with tiny black eyes and a black beak--so small that it was hardly worth calling a beak at all--stuck at one point, and a thin tail at the other extreme.
"Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," they kept crying, which meant,--"Let me come inside where it's warm;" and as they kept on whining the same cry, the outside birds kept flitting over the backs of those next to them, and trying to get a middle place. Then the next two did the same, and the next, and the next, until they all had done the same thing, when they began again; and all the while that wretched, querulous piping "peedle-weedle-wee" kept on, till Mrs Flutethroat grew so angry, and annoyed and irritable, that she felt as though she could have thrown one of her eggs at the tiresome little intruders on the peace of the garden.
"Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," said the bottle-tits as busy as ever, trying to get the warmest spot.
"There they go again," said Mrs Flutethroat; "why don't you go somewhere else, and not make that noise there?"
"Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," said the bottle-tits.
"Ah!" said Mrs Flutethroat, "I wish I was behind you, I'd make you say `Peedle-wee-weedle--weedle-wee-peedle,' as you call it. I'd soon He after you, only it is so dark, and all my egg's would grow cold. Tchink-tchink-tchink," she cried, trying to fright them; but still they kept on "Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee" worse than ever; and, as it grew dark, it actually appeared as though they were coming nearer to the nest.
"There," she exclaimed at last, "I can't stand this any longer! Here, Flutethroat, wake up, do," she cried to her partner, who was sitting upon a neighbouring bough with his feathers erect all over him, and his head turned right under and quite out of sight. "Wake up, wake up, do," she cried again, trying to shake the boughs.
But Flutethroat could not wake up just then, for he was