ise? Short little phrases, just suited to a bird."

"But, dear, you must have spent hours teaching them."

"It requires a great deal of patience, but when there is a great
whirl in one's head--"

Evelyn stopped speaking, and Louise understood that she shrank from
the confession that to retain her sanity she had taught bullfinches
to whistle,

"So she is sane, saner than any of us, for she has kept herself sane
by an effort of her own will," Louise said to herself.

"Some birds learn much quicker than others; they vary a great deal."

"My dear Evelyn, it is ever so nice of you. Just fancy teaching
bullfinches to sing the motives of 'The Ring,' It seemed to me I was
in an enchanted garden. But tell me, why, when you had taught them,
did you let them fly away?"

"Well, you see, they can only remember two tunes. If you teach them a
third they forget the first two, and it seemed a pity to confuse
them."

"So when a bullfinch knows two motives you let him go? Well, it is
all very simple now you have explained it. They find everything they
want in the garden. The bullfinch is a homely little bird, almost as
domestic as the robin; they just stay here, isn't that it?"

"Sometimes they go into the park, but they come every morning to be
fed. On the whole, Francis is my best bird; but there is another who
in a way excels him--Timothy. I don't know why we call him Timothy;
it isn't a pretty name, but it seems suited to him because I taught
him 'The Shepherd's Pipe'; and you know how difficult it is, dropping
half a note each time? Yet he knows it nearly all; sometimes he will
whistle it through without a mistake. We could have got a great deal
of money for him if he had been sold, and Reverend Mother wanted me
to sell him, but I wouldn't."

And Evelyn led Louise away to a far corner.

"He is generally in this corner; these are his trees." And Evelyn
began to whistle.

"Does he answer you when you whistle?"

"No; scraping one's feet against the gravel, some little material
noise, will set him whistling." And Evelyn scraped her feet. "I'm
afraid he isn't here to-day. But there is the bell for Benediction.
We must not keep the nuns waiting." And the singers hurried towards
the convent, where they met the Prioress and the Mistress of the
Novices and Sister Mary John.

"Dear me, how late you are, Sister!" said Sister Mary John. "I
suppose you were listening to the bullfinches. Aren't they wonderful?
But won't you intr