The babies were too little to talk much, but they stretched their necks up lovingly and sleepily to all the family, and acted as though they really understood how many people had been loving and working for them, even before they were hatched.
One does not like to say such things, but the English Sparrows were very disagreeable people. And they are very disagreeable people. Also, they always have been, and probably always will be, very disagreeable people. They were the first birds to make trouble among neighbors anywhere around the big house. If it had not been that the Gentleman who lived there was so very tender-hearted, their nests would probably have been poked down with poles long before the eggs could have been laid in them. When Boys came around with little rifles and ugly looking bags slung over their shoulders, they were always ordered away and told that the Gentleman would have no shooting near his house.
It is not strange then that the woodbine was full of Sparrows' nests, and that many of the evergreens also bore them in their top branches. One had even been tucked in behind a conductor pipe, and their owners hunted and argued and fussed all over the place. There was just one way in which the English Sparrows were not cared for like other birds around the big house. Silvertip was allowed to eat all that he could catch. And you may be very sure that no Robin ever called "Cat!" when he was ready to spring upon a Sparrow.
"It may be wrong," said one Robin mother, "but I cannot do it. I remember too well how they have robbed my nests and quarrelled with my friends. I say that they must care for their own children. And if they do not--well, so much the better for Silvertip!"
You see that the birds were not angry at Silvertip for trying to eat them. It was all to be expected, as they knew very well. It was not pleasant, but it had to be, just as Worms and Flies had to expect to be eaten, unless they were clever enough to keep out of the way of birds. Only the quickest and strongest could live, so of course all the young ones tried hard to become quick and strong.
When Miss Sparrow, from the nest behind the conductor pipe, was old enough to marry, she had many lovers, and that was quite natural. She was a plump and trim-looking bird, and pretty, too, if one came close enough to her. Her feathers were gray and brown, with a little white and black in places. Her bill was black, and her feet were brown. She was very careful to keep clean, and although she had to hunt food in the mud of the street, she bathed often in fine dust and kept her wings and tail well up. Her lovers were dressed in the same colors, but with more decided markings.