It was a large family from our point of view, and larger perhaps than
a prudent French partridge would approve, but the world is wide, and
there are no butcher's or baker's or tailor's or dress-maker's bills
to pay for little birds. All that a Pa and Ma Tridge have to do after
fledging is complete is to look out for cats and hawks and foxes, to
beware of the feet of clumsy cattle, and to administer correction and
advice. Above all there are no school bills, made so doubly ridiculous
among ourselves by German measles and other epidemics during which
no learning is imparted, but for which, educationalists being a wily
crew, no rebate is offered.

There being so little to be done for their young, it is no wonder, in
a didactic and over-articulate world, that parent Tridges take almost
too kindly to sententiousness; and young Tridges, being so numerous as
to constitute a public meeting in themselves, are specially liable to
admonishment.

It was therefore that, strolling aimlessly amid the herbage or the
young wheat with their audience all about them, Pa and Ma Tridge got
into a habit of counsel which threatened to become so chronic that
there was a danger of its dulling their sensibility to the approach of
September the first.

"Never," Pa Tridge would say, "criticise anyone or anything on
hearsay. See for yourself and then make up your own mind; but don't
hurry to put it into words."

"Tell the truth as often as possible," Pa Tridge would say. "It is
not only better citizenship to do so, but it makes things easier for
yourself in the long run."