business; we'll be having trouble and mischief all the time now. It
would have been better if we had let old Thistletop stay. What shall we
do?"

"Do! do!" cried old Mother Owl in an exasperated voice; "what is there
to do, I should like to know, but to get the children away? I wouldn't
keep them in the same tree with that gamblesome elf--no, not a night
longer--for all the mice you could offer me."

"But how can we get them away?" asked old Father Owl. "They can't fly."

"No, we can't fly!" cried all the little owls. "Oh, what shall we do?
Ow! Ow!"

"Can't fly! They've got to fly," said Mother Owl, "and you and I must
help them. Back to the old tree we go this very night."

After that there was a great to-do up in the hollow. Teddy watched it
all lying on his stomach in the door of the knot-hole, for it was
moonlight by this time and almost as bright as day.

The little owls got up on the edge of the hollow and there they sat,
teetering and flapping and afraid to fly. Their mother grew crosser and
crosser, and at last she got back of them and gave them a push, and then
down they went, fluttering and tumbling and bumping into the
tree-trunks.

The Father Owl sailed about from branch to branch, calling, "Who-o-o-o!
Who-o-o! Come on! Spread your wings and go like this. Who-o-o-o!" and
then he would sail on to another bush; but the Mother Owl flew down