Robert gave his cousin Richard, for a birth-day present, a nightingale, in a beautiful green cage, and told him to feed it with meal-worms and ants' eggs. The miller or the baker would supply him with the meal-worms, but the ants' eggs he would be pretty sure to find in his father's garden. He would only have to put a flower-pot, or a little wooden tub, in some dry sunny place, and the ants would find their way under the hedge, and lay their eggs there; for they are always careful to put them where the rain can not come.

Richard bought some meal-worms, but they cost almost all his pocket-money; and he must set about finding the ants' eggs, which would cost him nothing. So he did as Robert had told him, and, to his great delight, he found when he took up the flower-pot, on the next day, that a whole colony of ants had crept under it; for the earth was thrown up into little heaps, and looked fine, as if it had been sifted. Some little ants were trotting about quickly, as if they were trying to find out what had happened to make it so suddenly light.

Richard took a stick, and stirred the earth a little, and found a great many little, long white eggs lying about. He stretched out his hand to put the eggs into a little cup which he had brought with him, when, to his great amazement, the little ants caught up the eggs in their mouths, and ran away with them.

When Richard saw the kind motherly care of the ants, the tears came into his eyes, and he said, "No, I can not be so cruel as to trouble all these little creatures just to make one happy; and my little nightingale would like much better to sing in the cool green trees than in his close prison of a cage. I will go and let him fly where he pleases."

He did so, and oh! how soon the nightingale darted off to the grove near by, where his song was heard for many a long summer's evening after; and how joyful, too, Richard's heart felt.

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