ntil the round face and great eyes appeared at the mouth of
the hole. Then the round body tumbled out, and little Tommy was hobbling
about, looking, with pathetic eagerness, for "the old familiar faces."
When he discovered how he had been betrayed, his face went down and he
suffered himself to be carried quietly to the canary's cage in which he
was kept.

It seemed to be time now to begin Tommy's education, for I judged that,
if he had been at home, he would ere then have been getting nightly
lessons in the poacher's art. So I procured a small gecko, one of those
grey house lizards, with pellets at the ends of their toes, which come
down from the roof after the lamps are lit and gorge themselves on the
foolish moths and plant bugs that come to the light. Securing it with a
thin cord tied round its waist, I introduced it into Tommy's cage. He
looked surprised, very much surprised. He raised himself to his full
height. He gazed at it. He curtseyed. He gave a little jump and was
standing with both feet on the lizard. A moment more and the lizard was
gliding down his throat with my thin cord after it. Mr. Seton Thompson
would have us believe that all young things are laboriously trained by
their parents, just like human children, and if he was an eye-witness of
all the scenes that he describes so vividly, it must be so with other
young things. But he did not know Tommy, who is the bird of Minerva and
evidently sprang into being, like his patron goddess, with all his
armour on.

After a time, when he had exchanged his infant down for a suit of
feathers, he was promoted to a large cage out in the garden, and his
regular diet was a little raw meat or a mutton bone tied to one of his
perches, but, by way of a treat, I would offer him, whenever I could get
it, a locust, or large grasshopper. His way of accepting this was unique
and pretty. He would look surprised, stare, curtsey once or twice, stare
again and then, suddenly, noiselessly and as lightly as a fairy, flit
across the cage and, without alighting, pluck the insect from my fingers
with both his feet and return to his perch.

Why he bowed to his food and to everybody and everything that presented
itself before him was a riddle that I never solved. A materialistic
friend suggested that he was adjusting the focus of his wonderful eyes,
and the action was certainly like that of an optician examining a lens;
but I feel that there was something more ceremonial about it. Thi