THE LITTLE LOVER. 31 



The third week in May the little lover was sing- 

 ing as hard as ever. I wrote in my note-book — 

 "Wrens do not take life with proper serious- 

 ness, their duties certainly do not tie them down." 

 When the eggs were in the nest, if her mate sang 

 at her door, the mother bird would fly out to him 

 and away they would go together ; for it never 

 seemed to occur to the care-free lover that he 

 might brood the eggs in her absence. 



When the young hatched, however, affairs took 

 a more serious turn. Mother wren at least was 

 kept busy looking for spiders, and later, when 

 both were working together, if not hunting among 

 the green treetops, the pretty little brown birds 

 often flew to the ground and ran about under the 

 weeds to search for insects. Once when the 

 mother bird had flown up with her bill full, she 

 suddenly stopped at the twig in front of the nest, 

 looking down, her tail over her back wren fashion, 

 the sun on her brown sides, and her bill bristling 

 with spiders' legs. 



On June 7 I noticed a remarkable thing. For 

 more than five weeks, all through the building 

 and brooding, the little lover had been acting as 

 if on his honeymoon — as if the nest were a joke 

 and there were nothing for him to do in the world 

 but sing and make love to his pretty mate — as 

 if life were all ' a-courtin'.' On this day he first 

 came to the tree with food, sang out for his spouse, 

 gave her the morsel, and flew off. Later in the 



