w much I have
done. And here have I been sitting for long enough and have not
scratched a word. I wonder how soon he will come?"

The boy sat silently for a few minutes watching some twittering young
birds that were playing in the garden trees, chasing one another from
twig to twig in the full enjoyment of their life in the transparent
atmosphere.

"I wish I were a bird!" sighed the boy, and then half passionately: "Oh,
what a lazy dog I am! I am always longing to be or do something else
than what I am. But look at that," he said, dropping into his dreamy
way again. "How beautiful it must be to throw oneself off the very top
of a tree and go floating and gliding about just where one likes, with
no books to study, nothing to write, only play about in the sunshine,
covered with clothes of the softest down; no bother about a house to
live in or a bed, but just when the sun goes down sing a bit about how
pleasant life is as one sits on a twig, and then tuck one's head under
one's wing, stick one's feathers up till one looks like a ball, and go
to sleep till the Sun rises again. Oh, how glorious to be a bird! Ha,
ha, ha!" he cried, with a merry laugh, "Old Serge is right. He says I
am a young fool, when he's in the grumps, and I suppose I am to think
like that; but it seems a life so free from trouble to be a bird, till a
cat comes, or a weasel, or perhaps a snake, and catches one on the
ground, or a hawk when one's flying in the air, or one of the noisy old
owls when one's roosting in the ivy at night. And then squeak--
scrunch--and there's no more bird. Everything has to work, I suppose,
and nothing is able to do just as it pleases. That's what father says,
and, of course, it's true; but somehow I should like to go out this
morning, but I can't; I have to stick here and write. There's father
gone off, and old Serge too. I wonder where he's gone. Right away into
the forest, of course, to look after the swine, or else into the fields
to see whether something's growing properly, and mind that the men keep
to work and are not lying snoozing somewhere in the shade. Oh, how
beautiful it looks out of doors!"

Marcus sat gazing longingly out of the window, and then apparently, for
no reason at all, raised his right hand and gave himself a sharp slap on
the side of the head.

"Take that, you lazy brute!" he cried. "Of course you can't do your
work if you sit staring out of the window. Turn your back to it, sir,