en if Taka heard us
he would not answer.

The western sky was a brighter red than Goody's hair-ribbon before we
sat ourselves down, discouraged, on the piazza steps to wait for
Joy-of-Life.

One by one the children had been summoned home, all but Wallace. He had
by telephone directed his parents, who used to be older than he but
whom he now watched over with solicitude, to eat their supper without
him and go to bed as usual in case he should be detained.

"I don't like to think of that little goldy head out in the big dark
all night," I said.

"Maybe a star will suppose it's another star and come down and stay
with it," suggested Wallace, trying to buttress my sagging courage.

"His winglets are so wild and so weak."

"I believe the other birds know where he is. Please tell us," entreated
Wallace, addressing a solemn crow that had just flapped over from the
wood to a neighboring fence-post.

"Now it's no use to be asking of His Riverence," put in Mary. "All the
crows were prastes once and they talk only the Latin."

It was one of Joy-of-Life's miracles. It was almost dark when, tired
and hungry, she came home from Boston,--from a committee meeting of
philanthropists who had been quarreling as only philanthropists can.
She looked into Taka's empty cage, stayed but for a glass of milk and a
few inquiries as to our field of search, and then, taking an electric
torch, slipped softly into Giant Bluff's cherished tangle of luxuriant
rosebushes, where the rest of us had not dared to venture. In a few
minutes she emerged, scores of irate briars catching at her clothes and
hair. She was crooning as she came out and in her safe clasp nestled a
sleepy little bird.

Soon after this episode, Joy-of-Life went west for her summer sojourn
among the birds at a Wisconsin lake, leaving to Mary, Robin Hood and
myself the guardianship of that forlorn mite. He was as obstinate as
ever in his lonesomeness, always pettishly rebuffing the friendly
advances of Robin and, though I would take his cage to the vicinity of
bird after bird, hoping that in some one of these he might recognize a
kindred spirit, he found nothing of his feather. The white-breasted
nuthatch, after nearly two months of absence, presumably for the
rearing of a brood in leafy seclusion, returned for a call at the
feeding-box, looking as genteel as ever in his tailor-made gray suit,
but so preoccupied with domestic memories that at first he would say
nothing but "S