ell then, for if you can't, the general will stab you dead with his beak; so when I start to teach you, pay attention and learn well."

"Oh, then we'll be stabbed, just the way the boys say! And listen, there they go, saying it again!"

"Never mind them; pay attention to me," said Mother Stork. "After the big maneuvers, we'll fly away to the warm countries, oh, so far away from here, over mountains and forests. We'll get to Egypt, where they have four-cornered houses of stone that come up to a point higher than the clouds. They call them pyramids, and they're even older than a stork could imagine. They have a river there too, that runs out of its banks, and turns the whole land to mud! We walk about in that mud, eating frogs."

"Oh!" cried the young storks.

"Yes, indeed. It's wonderful there. You don't do anything but eat all day long. And while we're so comfortable there, back here there isn't a green leaf left on the trees, and it's so cold that the clouds freeze to pieces and fall down in little white rags."

She meant snow of course, but she didn't know any other way to explain it to the young ones.

"And do the naughty boys freeze to pieces, too?" asked the young storks.

"No, they don't quite do that," their mother replied. "But they come pretty close to it, and have to sit moping in a dark room. But we, on the other hand, fly about in foreign lands, among the flowers and in the warm sunshine."

Some time passed, and the young storks grew large enough so that they could stand up in the nest and look at the wide world around them. Every day Father Stork brought them beautiful frogs and delicious little snakes and all sorts of dainties that storks like. And how they laughed when he did tricks to amuse them! He would lay his head entirely back on his tail, and clap his beak as if it were a rattle. And then he would tell them stories, all about the marshes that they would see some day.

At last one day Mother Stork led them all out onto the ridge of the roof.

"Now", she said, "it's time for you to learn to fly." Oh, how they wobbled and how they tottered, trying to balance themselves with their wings, and nearly falling off the roof!

"Watch me now," their mother called. "Hold your head like this! Move your legs like that! One, two! One, two! That'll help you get somewhere in the world!"

Then she flew a little way from the roof, and the young ones made a clumsy attempt to follow. Bumps! There they lay, for their bodies were still too heavy.

"I don't want to fly," complained the youngest one, creeping back into the nest. "I don't care about going to the warm countries at all!"

"Oh, so you want to freeze to death here, when the winter comes, do you?" demanded his mother. "You want the boys to come and hang you and beat you and burn you, do you? All right, I'll call them!"

"Oh, no! Don't do that!" cried the little stork, and hopped out on the ridge again with the others.

By the third day they could fly a little, and so they thought they could soar and hover in the air without moving their wings, but-when th

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