isting on intelligent replies to
his remarks. At intervals throughout the day, too, I would hear a soft
thud on the box, followed by a chirp-p-p and the flap-p-p of a very
impatient and business-like little wing. On these occasions Robin Hood
was quite too much occupied with his greenwood affairs to feed himself,
and I must needs drop book or pen and cram refreshment down his
importunate yellow gullet till it could hold no more. Then he would hop
across to his Japanese water-cup, take a dozen eager dips, wipe his
bill first on one side, then the other, on the edge of the box, and
then, flapping his wing for good-by, sweep off again. In the middle of
every forenoon and, during the hottest weather, of the afternoon as
well, he alighted on his cage and called imperiously to Mary to bring
him fresh water for his bath. We shut him in during this and during his
sun-baths, since he enjoyed these rites so much as to be even more than
commonly oblivious of cats.

On the evening of July 24 the mercury "dropped on us," as Mary said,
some thirty degrees, and a drenching rain fell all night--a new
experience for Robin Hood, who appeared at my window Thursday morning,
a draggled little vagabond. Had there been no wise robin at hand to
teach him how to take the oil from his back pockets and convert his
airy fluff into a tight-fitting waterproof? He was glad to come in out
of the wet and spent the forenoon in Mary's kitchen, letting her fondle
him as she would, but flying with alarm from the proffered caresses of
market-man and grocer-boy. In the course of the next few days, however,
he began to protest a little when even his old friends stooped to take
him up. He would hop backward, snapping his bill, but he seldom flew
and, if the hand did not remain closed upon him, but left him perching
free on wrist or finger, he was entirely content.

On August 8 we did our Robin wrong. An expected dinner guest had
expressed a desire to see him and, as by this time he was spending his
nights, presumably, in a far-off Robin roost, for which he sometimes
started early in the afternoon, Mary caught him during the absorbed
ecstasy of his sun-bath and shut him into the cage. This was still a
favorite resort of his, and he did not object in the slightest until a
young robin playmate with whom he was in the habit of flying to the
roost whistled for him from a scarlet oak. Then Robin chirped to us to
let him out, growing frantic with excitement as we, h