"What is the book you were reading when we came up?" asked Olive. Rap
pulled it out and laid it on her lap, saying, "I don't know its
name--the beginning part that tells is gone--but it's all about birds.
Here's a picture of a Bluebird, only it isn't quite right, somehow. Oh,
I do wish I had all of the book."

Olive turned over the leaves that looked familiar to her and saw that it
began at page 443. "Why, it is part of the first volume of Nuttall's
'Manual of Birds.' My father has the whole of this book," she said.
"Where did you find this bit?"

"The rag pedler that comes by every fall lets me look in his bags,
'cause sometimes there are paper books in them, and he gave me this for
nothing, 'cause it was only a piece."

"Why don't you ask your father to buy you a whole book, instead of
grubbing in rag-bags?" said Nat thoughtlessly.

Rap looked from one to the other, as if in his interest he had forgotten
himself for a time, and then he said quietly, "I haven't any father."

"I haven't any mother," said Olive quickly, putting her hand gently on
the thin brown one. "We must be friends, Rap."

Her sympathy soothed him immediately, and his gentle nature instantly
tried to comfort her by saying, "But you said your father owned the
whole of my book. How glad you must be!"

Then they all laughed, and Nat and Dodo began telling about their
uncle's room and all the books and birds in it, and about the book he
had promised to write for them, until Rap looked so bewildered that
Olive was obliged to explain things a little more clearly to him. "Come
home with us," cried Nat and Dodo, each seizing him by a hand, "and
perhaps uncle will tell you all the names we must learn--head, throat,
wings, and what all the other parts are rightly called--and then we can
go around together and watch birds."

But as Rap turned over and scrambled up with the aid of his crutch, they
saw that he had only one leg, for the trouser of the left leg was tied
together just below the knee.

Acting as if they did not notice this, they led the way to the house,
going close to the fence that divided the orchard from the road, because
there was a little path worn there.

"What is the whole of your name?" asked Dodo, who could not keep from
asking questions.

"Stephen Hawley," he answered. "My mother is Ann Hawley, who lives by
the mill, and does all the beautiful fine white washing for everybody
hereabouts. Don't you know her? I suppose it's bec