tomed window, on the feeding-box now drifted over with
snow, sat a great, plump, glossy redbreast, staring into the room with
Robin's own bright eyes and cocking his head to listen to our welcome.
He fluttered back to the nearest tree, when we opened the window,
indicating that he had learned a thing or two, in the gossip of the
long aerial journeys, about the human race, nor did he ever again enter
the house nor let us touch him, but he kept close by, for weeks,
perching in his old familiar places on roof and rail and window-ledge,
hopping in our walks and gamboling in our eyes. Out in the open, he
would come within a few inches of us and there take his stand and chirp
the confidences that we would have given all our dictionaries to
comprehend. He was such a tall, stately robin, with such an imposing
air of travel and experience as he stood erect, swelling his bright
breast with the effort to relate his Winter's Tale, that Joy-of-Life
rechristened him Lord Bobs.

In course of time our gallant fledgling appeared in company with a
mate, most disappointing to our romantic anticipation,--a faded
crosspatch old enough to be his grandmother, a very shrew who scolded
him outrageously whenever she saw him lingering beside us. She told him
we were ogres, alligators, everything that was horrible and dangerous,
and threatened to peck out his last pin-feather unless he flew away
from us at once. A selfish old body she was, too, monopolizing the
rock-bath, as if she were taking a cure for rheumatism, whole hours at
a time, while Robin Hood, hot and dusty, waited on her pleasure in the
drooping branches above. But despite her shrill remonstrances, he would
still visit the window box, perching on Downy Woodpecker's marrow-bone
for an opera stage and trilling his matins and vespers to our delighted
ears. We were as proud of Robin Hood's singing as if we had taught him
ourselves. Between his carols our troubadour would take a little
refreshment, trying in turn Nuthatch's lump of suet, Bluejay's rinds of
cheese, Junco's crumbs and his own mocking-bird food, or quaffing rain
water from Chickadee's nutshell cups. He would sometimes hop to the
sill and, close against the glass, watch all the doings in that world
which lay about him in his infancy. We looked forward to an hour when
he might bring his own little speckles to play, as he had loved to
play, with the empty nutshells, but Mrs. Robin hustled him off to the
woods for the nesting se