e have none, and his delight on a summer afternoon is to go with me
to some spot in the Gardens where these unfortunates may be seen trying
to catch one with small pieces of cake.

That the birds know what would happen if they were caught, and are even
a little undecided about which is the better life, is obvious to every
student of them. Thus, if you leave your empty perambulator under the
trees and watch from a distance, you will see the birds boarding it and
hopping about from pillow to blanket in a twitter of excitement; they
are trying to find out how babyhood would suit them.

Quite the prettiest sight in the Gardens is when the babies stray from
the tree where the nurse is sitting and are seen feeding the birds, not
a grownup near them. It is first a bit to me and then a bit to you,
and all the time such a jabbering and laughing from both sides of the
railing. They are comparing notes and inquiring for old friends, and so
on; but what they say I cannot determine, for when I approach they all
fly away.

The first time I ever saw David was on the sward behind the Baby's Walk.
He was a missel-thrush, attracted thither that hot day by a hose which
lay on the ground sending forth a gay trickle of water, and David was on
his back in the water, kicking up his legs. He used to enjoy being told
of this, having forgotten all about it, and gradually it all came back
to him, with a number of other incidents that had escaped my memory,
though I remember that he was eventually caught by the leg with a long
string and a cunning arrangement of twigs near the Round Pond. He never
tires of this story, but I notice that it is now he who tells it to me
rather than I to him, and when we come to the string he rubs his little
leg as if it still smarted.

So when David saw his chance of being a missel-thrush again he called
out to me quickly: "Don't drop the letter!" and there were tree-tops in
his eyes.

"Think of your mother," I said severely.

He said he would often fly in to see her. The first thing he would do
would be to hug her. No, he would alight on the water-jug first, and
have a drink.

"Tell her, father," he said with horrid heartlessness, "always to have
plenty of water in it, 'cos if I had to lean down too far I might fall
in and be drownded."

"Am I not to drop the letter, David? Think of your poor mother without
her boy!"

It affected him, but he bore up. When she was asleep, he said, he would
hop on to the f