They had eager sympathies with all modes of life, and could learn of the wildest creatures: why should they not take refuge from the cold and their enemies in the tree-tops?
why not, having lain in the low brushwood, seek now the lofty foliage?
why not build nests where it would not serve to scoop hollows?
All that the birds could do, the Little Ones could learn--except, indeed, to fly! She spoke to them on the subject, and they heard with approval.

They could already climb the trees, and they had often watched the birds building their nests! The trees of the forest, although large, did not look bad! They went up much nearer the sky than those of the giants, and spread out their arms--some even stretched them down--as if inviting them to come and live with them! Perhaps, in the top of the tallest, they might find that bird that laid the baby-eggs, and sat upon them till they were ripe, then tumbled them down to let the little ones out! Yes; they would build sleep-houses in the trees, where no giant would see them, for never by any chance did one throw back his dull head to look up! Then the bad giants would be sure they had left the country, and the Little Ones would gather their own apples and pears and figs and mesples and peaches when they were asleep! Thus reasoned the Lovers, and eagerly adopted Lona's suggestion--with the result that they were soon as much at home in the tree-tops as the birds themselves, and that the giants came ere long to the conclusion that they had frightened them out of the country--whereupon they forgot their trees, and again almost ceased to believe in the existence of their small neighbours.
Lona asked me whether I had not observed that many of the children were grown.

I answered I had not, but could readily believe it.

She assured me it was so, but said the certain evidence that their minds too had grown since their migration upward, had gone far in mitigation of the alarm the discovery had occasioned her.
In the last of the short twilight, and later when the moon was shining, they went down to the valley, and gathered fruit enough to serve them the next day; for the giants never went out in the twilight: that to them was darkness; and they hated the moon: had they been able, they would have extinguished her.

But soon the Little Ones found that fruit gathered in the night was not altogether good the next day; so the question arose whether it would not be better, instead of pretending to have left the country, to make the bad giants themselves leave it.
They had already, she said, in exploring the forest, made acquaintance with the animals in it, and with most of them personally.