ams, but I had set my heart on
having an owl on the nursery clock. I do think I have never wished so
much for anything in the world as that Tom's owl would be our Bird of
Wisdom. But he never will. He will never let me tame him. He wants to
be a wild owl all his life. I love him very much, and I should like
him to have what he wants, and not be miserable. Please thank Tom very
much, and please ask him to let him go."

"I'm sorry I brought him, Miss, to trouble you," said the coachman.
"But Tom won't let him go. He'd a lot of trouble catching him, and if
he's no good to you, Tom'll be glad of him to stuff. He's got some
glass eyes out of a stuffed fox the moths ate, and he's bent on
stuffing an owl, is Tom. The eyes would be too big for a pheasant, but
they'll look well enough in an owl, he thinks."

My hearing is very acute, and not a word of that Bad Boy's brutal
intentions was lost on me. I shrunk among my feathers and shivered
with despair; but when I heard the voice of Little Miss I rounded my
ear once more.

"No, Williams, no! He must not be stuffed. Oh, please beg Tom to come
to me. Perhaps I can give him something to persuade him not. If he
must stuff an owl, please, please let him stuff a strange owl. One I
haven't made friends with. Not this one. He is very wild, but he is
very lovely and soft, and I do so want him to be let go."

"Well, Miss, I'll send Tom and you can settle it with him. All I say,
he's a Tartar, and stuffing's too good for him."

Whether she bribed Tom, or persuaded him, I don't know, but Little
Miss got her way, and that Bad Boy let me go, and I went back to my
Ivy Bush.

OWLHOOT I.

"What can't be cured must be endured."

--_Old Proverb._

It was the wish to see Little Miss once more that led my wings past
her nursery window; besides, I had a curiosity to look at the clock.

It is an eight-day clock, in a handsome case, and would, undoubtedly,
have been a becoming perch for a bird of my dignified appearance, but
I will not describe it to-day. Nor will I speak of my meditations as I
sit in my Ivy Bush like any other common owl, and reflect that if I
had not had my own way, but had listened to Little Miss, I might have
sat on an Eight-day Clock, and been godfather to the children. It is
not seemly for an owl to doubt his own wisdom, but as I have taken
upon me, for the sake of Little Miss, to be a child's counsellor, I
will just observe, in passing, that though it is very