The Tale of Bobby Bobolink | Page 3

on a hillock) and swerved and zigzagged and wheeled through the air, until Mr. Crow almost tied his neck into a knot, just watching him.
"By the way," Mr. Meadowlark said in an undertone to Mr. Red-winged Blackbird, "our friend Bobby has a different suit from the one he wore when I last saw him."
"When was that?" Mr. Red-winged Blackbird inquired.
"About the middle of last summer!" Mr. Meadowlark explained.
"Ah! This is the second suit he has had since then," said Mr. Red-winged Blackbird. "If you had been with us in the swamp last fall you'd have known that Bobby had a new one then. And here he is now with still another."
Mr. Meadowlark looked a bit troubled.
"I liked the black one--the black one with the white and buff trimmings," he remarked. "It was very becoming to Bobby Bobolink. I was hoping he'd wear one like it this summer."
"Wait!" was Mr. Red-winged Blackbird's mysterious answer. "Wait! And I promise you won't be disappointed."
"Anyhow, he sings as well as ever," Mr. Meadowlark declared.

IV
SINGING FOR SOME ONE
THE first few days of early May had passed and with them had flitted--somewhere--most of the jolly company in which Bobby Bobolink had journeyed from the South. But a few of those merrymakers had stayed--as Bobby did--in Farmer Green's meadow. They had made up their minds to spend the summer in Pleasant Valley.
Even old Mr. Crow, who was no lover of music, had to admit that he had never heard such bursts of song during all the summers he had spent in the neighborhood. It seemed as if Bobby Bobolink and his companions were trying their best to out-sing one another, though nobody knew why they should do that.
But at last somebody discovered the reason. That rowdy of the woods, Jasper Jay, spied upon the harum-scarum singers one day, when they were all but bursting themselves in a frenzy of song. And he saw that they were giving what Jasper called "a serenade."
They were singing not for themselves but for a dull, yellowish-brown lady of their own sort, who had not arrived from the South until Bobby and his friends had been frolicking about the meadow almost a week.
She seemed a shy creature--this young person--preferring to stay on the ground during the serenade. But Bobby Bobolink and his companions were bold as brass. Often they alighted on the ground near her, as if they thought she could not hear their songs well enough when they skimmed through the air over the grassy meadow. Amid such a jingling and tinkling of notes it was no wonder that the little lady acted somewhat confused.
Jasper Jay, who was almost as great a gossip as Mr. Crow, told everybody in the neighborhood that he had never heard such a hubbub. But then, like his cousin Mr. Crow, Jasper was not a lover of music. And it was true that sprightly Bobby Bobolink and his dashing friends made no attempt to sing together. To be sure, they sang all at the same time; but each one of them sang his own song in his own way, just as if his was the only one that was being sung.
They never tired of entertaining the lady. And whether the yellowish-brown person decided that Bobby Bobolink sang louder than the others, or whether she thought his singing was sweeter or gayer than that of his friends, nobody ever found out. Perhaps he managed to say something--in his song--that especially pleased her. Anyhow, it was only a short time before Bobby Bobolink was making such remarks as these to everybody in the meadow:
"My wife says I have the quickest eye for a caterpillar that she ever saw!" and "Mrs. Bobolink and I expect to begin to build a new house at once!"
Now, you might think that Bobby's friends, after all their singing for the little lady, would have felt quite glum. But they were not in the least downcast. Of course, Bobby Bobolink would not let them serenade his wife. Indeed he promptly chased them away as soon as he knew that he had won her.
But they were so light-hearted that they started right away to sing for another lady in another part of the meadow.
She was as like the first one as two peas in a pod. And Jasper Jay chuckled when he found out what was going on.
He said he didn't believe they knew the difference.

V
AN INVITATION
MR. MEADOWLARK was a great admirer of Bobby Bobolink. Much as he liked to sing himself, he often remained silent when Bobby's joyous music tinkled over the grass-tops in Farmer Green's meadow. And as Mr. Meadowlark was listening to one of Bobby's best songs one day an idea popped suddenly into his head. He liked this notion so well that he flew straight across the meadow to a thicket