uses and provided for our simple needs with indulgent efficiency as
long as her whim lasted. Although she had broiled and roasted for a
governor, a bishop, and various magnates of industry, she turned to
scrubbing for recreation as naturally as czars and kaisers turn to
chopping wood. She beat every particle of dust, after sweeping, out of
broom and whisk, and before hanging out the clothes, she scoured the
line and every astonished clothespin. The sheets and other flat pieces
sent home from the laundry she straightway plunged into her own tubs.
Her pantry shone with obtrusive cleanliness and every dish came
glistening to the stiff, high-lustered table-cloth, where her spiced
breadsticks were cradled in fresh napkins for each dinner. Her kitchen
range fairly dazzled the eye with its sable brightness, and we were so
proud of the toothsome concoctions that came crackling and crinkling
from it as to give, under her smiling encouragement, a ruinous series
of banquets to our campus friends.

Promptly on Gunilla's departure, Mary came charging back to us, fired
with jealous wrath. Indeed, she would talk of little else but the
enormities of extravagance committed by "The Gorilla," until Robin
Hood's advent effected a welcome diversion.

For the week following his first venture into the trees Robin grew
braver and stronger every day. He had no feathered acquaintance and
kept close at home, hopping about under the rosebushes with a comical
air of proprietorship, bathing in an old flower-pot saucer in his open
cage and sitting sociably, for hours at a time, on Joy-of-Life's window
ledge or Mary's, or on my window box for winter birds. He could feed
himself by this time, but he still liked better to be fed. His table
manners showed marked improvement from his "little monster" age. He no
longer guzzled, and was becoming quite capable of picking up his own
living. Sometimes, when the ants were abundant, he would try the
experiment of self-support for half an afternoon. He was still a very
guileless birdling, and would fall sound asleep squatted down on any
sunny shelf of rock or even in the middle of a path, regardless of the
prowling tabbies that had already made way with our stonewall colony of
chipmunks. We encouraged him to frequent his safer haunts on roof and
window box by keeping fresh water and plentiful supplies of mocking
bird food ready for him there, but we had to know where he was from
dawn to dark, although the July d