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Now, as she said them, a new meaning seemed to play about them. She slipped through the gate and walked with unhurried feet toward the small house, so gay in its festal plumage. As she passed the old plum-tree she looked up and saw the mother bird cuddling her babies beneath her breast.

But the crow family had the pasture to themselves that morning, for in passing through the orchard, looking, as always, for indications of feathered life, I suddenly saw a new nest in the top of a plum-tree, and my spirits rose instantly when I noticed that the busy little architect, at that moment working upon it, was a goldfinch. What an unfortunate place she had chosen, was my first thought.

PRUNUS domestica. THE COMMON PLUM-TREE. This is the parent of our fruit of this name. PRUNUS Cerasus. WILD CHERRY-TREE. Is the parent of our fine cherries. It is cultivated much in Scotland for the timber, which is hard, and of use for furniture and other domestic purposes. It is the best and most lasting stock for grafting on.

"I suppose you can't help it, Belinda," said Anne, as she cuddled her, "but it's horrid of you to catch birds, horrid, Belinda." Belinda curled down into Anne's blue gingham lap, and Becky Sharp climbed once more to the limb of the plum-tree, from which she presently sounded a discordant note. Anne raised her head.

Several of them have already done it, and I see them resting on the dead limbs of a plum-tree across the road. But more are to follow, and parental anxiety is still rife. I shall be sorry when the spacious hayloft becomes silent. That affectionate "Wit, wit" and that contented and caressing squeaking and chattering give me a sense of winged companionship.

I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called Prunes sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and clearer?

After one of them had been disposed of in this way, he proceeded to carry off the others and place them here and there amid the branches of a plum-tree from which he had stolen every plum long before they were ripe. A day or two later I noted that they had all been removed from this tree, and I found some of them in the forks of an apple-tree not far off.

"My word!" cried Mary admiringly, "that there is a bit o' good Yorkshire. Tha'rt shapin' first-rate that tha' art." And delight reigned. They drew the chair under the plum-tree, which was snow-white with blossoms and musical with bees. It was like a king's canopy, a fairy king's.

Only in this instance Betty knew they were to be young maids instead of old ones, all in a row on the limb of a plum-tree in the orchard, their laughing faces thrust through the mass of snowy blossoms, as they waited to be photographed.

They will be as cunning as he, and the robin will wind his alarum-clock, the starling in the plum-tree will cry out like a hysterical drake, and the blackbird will make as much noise as a farmyard. The cat can but blink at the clamour of such a host of cunning sentinels and, pretending that he had come out only to take the air, return majestically to his dinner of leavings in the kitchen.