"No, indeed," said Nick-uts, "it's old Mother Mo-lo's. The nasty old
wretch laid it in there while we were away from home. She's always
sneaking around, the lazy old thing, to lay her eggs in some other
bird's nest. She's cowardly too. She always picks out the nest of one
smaller than herself. I wish I were big enough to give her a sound
thrashing.

"Please take the egg out," he went on. "I can't do it myself, and if you
don't take it out, we shall have to leave the nest and our own eggs and
build a new one."

Little Luke took the egg out of the nest and threw it on the ground.
"Why don't Mother Mo-lo build a nest of her own?" he asked.

"Oh, she can't. She doesn't know enough," answered Nick-uts. "In the old
days she had a chance to learn the same as the rest of us. She wouldn't
learn then, and now she can't. I don't believe she ever tries.

"She sneaks around and steals her eggs into the nests of other birds,
and some of them are so silly they don't know the difference. They hatch
the egg and bring up the young one as if it were their own. The young
Mo-los are greedy things and they eat up everything away from the other
little birds. Besides, they grow so fast that they crowd out the other
young ones, so that they fall to the ground and die. I've known old
Mother Mo-lo to fool O-loo-la the Wood Thrush that way. It's a shame
for a decent bird to be imposed upon like that.

"She tried the trick twice on me last year. Once we managed to roll the
egg out, and once we built a second floor to the nest, but we lost two