"Villain!" their neighbor cried.

It is a wonder they didn't fly straight at Sandy and knock him off the
limb.

At first he was too frightened to say a word. But when he saw that he
wasn't hurt, Sandy looked down at the broken egg and said:

"What a pity!" He meant it, too. For he thought it was a shame to waste a
perfectly good egg like that, when he might have eaten it.

"You don't mean you're sorry, do you?" Mrs. Robin asked him.

"Certainly I am!" Sandy told her. "I was just counting your eggs. And
when you startled me, I dropped that one. I thought it must be a hawk,
you all made such a noise."

"You're sure you weren't going to eat our eggs?" Mr. Robin inquired.

"Eat them!" Sandy exclaimed. "Why, my mother has often told me not to eat
birds' eggs."

When he heard that, Mr. Robin whispered something to his wife. And then
he said to Sandy Chipmunk:

"You go home! And don't let me catch you around this tree again!"

Sandy was glad to escape so easily as that. And though he was sorry to
have missed a good meal, there was one thing that made him almost