Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin | Page 6

expect that my baby partridges will all be out of the shell before next Thursday!" said Mrs. Partridge. "I do hope that the weather stays good! Last year the weather was so cold and wet that it was very disagreeable!"
"How many eggs are you covering, Mrs. Partridge?" asked Mrs. Robin.
"Only twelve, this year!"
"Twelve! Mercy me! Why! Mrs. Partridge! I cannot see how you will be able to look after so many children!"
"I do not think twelve is such a large family! Last year I had fourteen, and every one of them grew to be as big as their father," said Mrs. Partridge.
"The largest family I ever had was five, and one of them kept falling out of the nest!" said Mrs. Robin.
"I always take my children out of the nest as soon as they are out of the shell! It is so much more sanitary!" said Mrs. Partridge.
"My children simply have to stay in their nest until they are ready to fly! It is such a job to feed and care for them! They never seem to get enough to eat!"
Just then they heard Mister Robert Robin calling. He was standing beside the nest and saying, "Tut! Tut! Tut!--Tut! Tut! Tut!"
"Mister Robin is getting uneasy so I had better hurry home before he does something desperate!"
Mrs. Partridge watched Mrs. Robin as she flew back to her nest in the tall basswood tree.
"That little Mrs. Robin is a very neat sort of a little body!" she said to herself. "I just know that she is a tidy nest keeper,--she always looks so spick and span, herself!"
Robert Robin could hardly wait until Mrs. Robin got back to their tree. He was in such a hurry. The moment she settled herself on the nest he darted away across the fields, straight to where the row of cherry trees bordered the farmer's garden.
He wanted to see if the cherries were ripe. But he was surprised to find that the cherries were all green and hard, and were too sour to even taste like a cherry.
"What makes the cherries so late, this year?" he thought to himself. "It does seem to me that these trees were in bloom so many weeks ago, that it is high time for them to be ready with their cherries!"
Robert Robin was sitting in the top of one of the farmer's cherry trees, thinking about the cherries that ought to be ripe when he saw a cat in the farmer's garden.
It was a big Maltese cat. It was a pretty cat, but Mister Robert Robin could not see anything pretty about a cat, and he did not like the looks of this one.
"I never saw this cat before!" thought Robert Robin. "The farmer must have a new cat! I hope it is a house-cat instead of a cat that goes prowling around the fields and woods!"
The big Maltese cat went over to the strawberry bed and lay down on some straw. Then the farmer's wife came into the garden, and there was a little boy with her. He was her sister's boy, and he was going to spend the summer at the farmer's home. The boy had a tin whistle, and once in a while he would blow upon it. The farmer's wife was thinking to herself, "After he goes to bed to-night, I am going to hide that whistle where he can't find it!" But she did not say a word to the little boy about the whistle.
The little boy saw the big Maltese cat lying on the strawberry bed, and the little boy went up close to the cat and blew his tin whistle at the cat. The big Maltese cat did not like to hear the whistle so close to his ears; it made his ears hurt, so he said "Meow!" and started to walk away, and the naughty little boy laughed, and blew the whistle with all his might. Then the farmer's wife said: "Do not tease the kitty, Donald!"
But Donald had not been taught to do as he was told, so he blew the whistle again and again and chased the Maltese cat across the lettuce bed, and over two rows of radishes.
The farmer's wife shouted, "Donald! Donald!" but Donald kept blowing the tin whistle and following the Maltese cat, but the next thing he knew the farmer's wife took his tin whistle away from him.
Donald was so angry that he jumped right up and down on the celery plants, and the farmer's wife said, "Look here! Young man!" and shook Donald until he looked like a jumping jack, and Donald was so surprised to think that anyone would dare shake him that he stopped right where he was, and then the farmer's wife said to him:
"Now, young man! You may as well know at