There was a long entry as narrow and dark as a mouse-hole, and with
doors opening off from it here and there. At the end of the hall was a
room that must have been the kitchen. It was very bare and lonely now,
and there was a fireplace at one end with a streak of light shining down
through the chimney.

While Teddy was standing by the chimney, he heard a rustling and
stirring about overhead; one of the little owls clicked its beak in its
sleep, and he heard a sleepy, whining voice: "Now just you stop
scrouging me. Screecher is scrouging me!"

Then he heard the Mother Owl: "Hus-s-s-h! Hus-s-s-h! Go to sleep; it's
broad daylight yet." After that all was still again.

"I wish," thought Teddy to himself, "that I could do something to make
the owls go away." Then he began to giggle to himself, and put both
hands over his mouth so that the owls up above wouldn't hear him.

He tiptoed back to the door in the knot-hole, and looked down at a bush
with long thorns on it, that grew close by. "I'll do it," he said to
himself; "I'll break off the thorns and put them in the nest, so that
the owls just can't stay there." In a moment he was down on the bush and
tugging at a tough thorn.

As soon as it broke off, he lifted it on his shoulder and clambered up
the rough bark of the tree to the great black hole where the owls lived.
When he looked down into it, there they were in the nest, fluffy and
gray, and fast asleep. Very quietly he slipped down, and set the thorn
in the side of the nest, with the point sticking out. After that, he
softly clambered out again.