Miss Fielding’s _Governess_ had not a larger following of School Stories than Mrs. Trimmer’s _Fabulous Histories_[112] produced in moral tales of birds and beasts. This little book, better known by its later title, _The History of the Robins_, was suggested by Mrs. Trimmer’s children, which may account for its being her only imaginative work. The children, taught during walks in the fields and gardens “to take particular notice of _every object_ that presented itself to their view”, were able, by a natural process of elimination, to develop a chief interest in animals, and “used often to express a wish that their Birds, Cats, Dogs etc., could talk, that they might hold conversations with them”. Their mother, instead of rebuking them for so irrational a desire, adapted the idea of talking birds to her own theories of morality and for once managed to see things from a child’s point of view.