gled to get free, pushing vigorously
against her fingers with wings and claws. But she only tightened her
grasp as he fought, and he was soon so closely held that he could not
move. She forgot her sore toe in her happiness over catching him, and
started homeward on the run. As she bounded along, he watched her with
his small, scared eyes.

On reaching the farm-house the little girl put him into a rough slat
cage that hung in her room; and while he stretched his cramped legs, and
opened his crumpled wings, she hurried to the window, where she captured
a handful of house-flies. She placed them in front of him, and he
retreated to the farthest corner of the cage, to beat the bars in
terror. But after she had hidden herself behind the headboard of the
bed, he came forward and ate up the flies without stopping to take a
breath between gulps. Then he snuggled down on a piece of her worn-out
woolen dress, and went to sleep again.

Though the little girl was yet only five and a half years old, she had
tried many times in her life, without success, to make the slat cage the
home of some feathery pet. Snipes and plover, orioles and ovenbirds,
bobolinks and meadow-larks, all had lived in it by turns for a few days.
But the snipes and plover had gone into a decline, the orioles and
ovenbirds had grown thin and unkempt, and the bobolinks and meadow-larks
had eaten themselves to death. Sorrowful over so much misfortune, she
had longed to secure a hardy bird that would not only live in captivity,
but would repay her loving care with songs.

The young cowbird proved to be just what she had wanted. Every day he
grew larger, plumper, and hungrier; and though he was not a song-bird,
his attempts at melody, made with much choking and wheezing and many wry
faces,--as if the countless flies he had swallowed were sticking in his
throat,--pleased her more than carols. Within a week after his capture
he was so tame that he would sit on her shoulder as she walked about her
room and peck at her teeth. She was certain that he was giving her so
many loving kisses; but her big brothers unsympathetically explained
that he thought she had some kernels of corn between her lips.

It was not long before he was allowed the freedom of the sitting-room a
little while every afternoon, and the little girl always sat and
watched him as he walked solemnly about it, taking long steps, calling
happily in his husky voice, and pecking curiously at the bright rag