All of Jolly ’s friends and relations were greatly surprised when they saw him bidding his wife and children good-by, on the day the Robin family started from Pleasant Valley for their winter home in the South.  
“What’s this?” they cried. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
 
And Jolly Robin laughed and said to them :
 
“Not to-day! But you’ll find me waiting for you when you reach your journey’s end.”
 
His wife, however, shook her head.
 
“It’s one of his queer notions—his and Jasper Jay’s,” she explained.
 
“Tut, tut!” her husband said. And he chucked her under the chin—and at his friends.
 
There was no time to say anything more, for everyone was eager to start. So the travellers called good-by to Jolly, while he waved a farewell to them.
 
It was not many minutes before he was the only member of the Robin family left in Pleasant Valley. He felt very lonely, all at once. And he wanted to hurry after the others. But he knew what Jasper Jay would say, if he did. Jasper would be sure to tell people that Jolly Robin was afraid to travel a new way.... Of course, Jolly didn’t want that to be said about him. So he looked as cheerful as he could; and he whistled the merriest he knew. Nobody—except his wife, maybe—would 40have guessed that he wasn’t happy.
 
Jolly spent a very lonely night. When he went to the roost where the whole Robin family had been sleeping for several weeks, he found it silent, after the gay that he had grown accustomed to hearing ther............