The vine must have swung down, for it hadn't tipped the nest over, and the mother bird was sitting on it still.
"'That will never do,' said my mother; 'the first cat that strays by will take the poor thing.' While I was looking at it mother went in the house and came back with a little tin pail.

She picked some branches and tied them round it so that the tin didn't show.

'Now,' she said to the Robin, the same as if it understood our language, 'get up and let me see if I can't better you a bit.' Then the bird left the nest, making a great fuss, and crying 'quick! quick!' as if all the woods were afire.
"'Oh, mother!' I cried, 'the eggs will get cold.

What are you taking the nest away for?
It was better to chance the cats.' "'Don't you fret, sonny,' said she; 'your mammy has some common sense if she don't trampoose all over creation watching birds.' And before I understood what she was doing she had put the nest in the top of the tin pail and hung it on a hook under the shed roof.

'Now,' she said, 'Mrs.Robin, try how you like that!' "I watched and after a few minutes first one Robin flew under the shed and then the other, and the next thing one was sitting on the pail-nest as nice as you please!" "Did the birds hatch ?" asked Olive, Nat, and Dodo, almost in the same breath.
"Yes, they hatched all right; and then I noticed something funny.