CANNIBALS IN COURT Dodo's birthday and a disappointment came together on the eighth, and the disappointment took the shape of a rainy day.

Not an early morning shower, with promise of warmth and clear weather; for it was one of the cold, northeasterly storms that are very trying at any time of the year, but doubly so when they come in July, and seem, for the time, to turn summer into autumn.
Dodo, Nat, Rap, and Olive stood under the shelter of the porch, the children vainly hoping that it might clear up before nine o'clock--the hour the train left--and Olive racking her brain for something that would soothe their feelings.

"We might ask mammy to let us go into the kitchen and make candy," she said.

"The weather is too damp and sticky for molasses candy, but butter-scotch will harden if we put it in the dairy." Even this did not seem to be very tempting to little people who had expected to go to the real Owl woods, and Quick barked and yelped as if he, too, felt cheated out of an expected excursion.
Presently the Doctor came out and saw the forlorn group, which, being quite heedless of the sharp slant of the rain, was rather wet and limp.
"Poor little bird-hunters!" he said--rather too cheerfully, they thought--"you look as unhappy as the party of astronomers who went all the way to Africa to photograph an eclipse of the sun, and when the time came were so excited that they forgot to open the camera, and so took no pictures.

Come into the hall and I will tell you about a plan I have.
Catching cold isn't a nice game for a birthday party.
"You expected to hear something about the cannibal birds to-day, and see the woods where a great many of them live and make their nests, didn't you ?" "Yes," said Dodo; "we wanted to know why they are cannibals, and see where the wicked things live that eat little Chickens and song birds." "Very well.