t she had
discovered in the thickets. By the following winter, her Celtic vision
had soared beyond all bounds. "The cherubs are shoveling snow off the
porch of Paradise this morning," I once happened to remark, whereat
Mary, plumping down the hot coffee-pot helter-skelter, sprang open-eyed
and open-mouthed to the window, gazing ecstatically up into the white
whirl of the storm. "I see thim! I see thim! The shining little dears!
It's using their wings for shovels they are, and I see one of their
feathers afloating down in the snow."

As the summer went on, Robin Hood became the pet of the neighborhood.
Even Giant Bluff, who had moods of declaring that "what with
'Biddy-Biddy' on one side, and 'Robby-Robby' on the other, this hill
ain't fit for nothin' but females to live on," would bring tidbits to
our Speckle, who soon saved him the trouble by making frequent calls at
the front door. A guest of that house used to come to her window in the
early morning and sing him "Robin Adair," while he stood on the
opposite roof attentively listening, his head cocked and his bright eye
turned on the serenader.

But he was a loyal little soul. He spent much of his time on Dame
Gentle's piazza, and although Joy-of-Life, just before her departure,
treating him for asthma--due, the sages said, to an overhearty diet in
his inactive babyhood--had popped an unhappy worm dipped in red pepper
down his throat, yet even this Robin could forgive. It had hurt his
feelings at the time. He had withdrawn to his best-beloved branch on
his best-beloved oak and maintained an offended silence for half an
hour, but with the sting his anger went, and for days after
Joy-of-Life's disappearance, Robin would fly up to her window ledge and
chirp to the closed blinds.

During this second week of freedom, his experience was enlarged by a
thunderstorm, which he contemplated with lively astonishment from
within my window, but the next morning worms were plentiful, and there,
to Giant Bluff's inordinate pride, was Robin trotting about the lawn
like an old hand, turning up bits of turf with a grubby little bill and
actually getting his own breakfast.

A day or two later our fledgling began to sow wild oats. Thursday
afternoon Mary missed him and, hunting for him beyond the cairn, which
she designated "The Pets' Cemetery," found him lending charmed
attention to a big, red-breasted robin, who dashed off so guiltily that
he bumped himself against the fence. All F