A MONTH’S MUSIC. 285 
cuit round me he flew into a low bush and pro- 
ceeded to dress his feathers listlessly. Probably 
what I had overheard was nothing more than a 
rehearsal. Within a week or two he would need 
to do his very best in winning the fair one of 
his choice, and for that supreme moment he had 
already put himself in training. The wise- 
hearted and obliging little beau! I must have 
been the veriest chufl not to wish him his pick 
of all the feminine wagtails in the wood. As 
for the pink anemones, they had done me a 
double kindness, in requital for which I could 
only carry them to the city, where, in their 
modesty, they would have blushed to a down- 
right crimson had they been conscious of one- 
half the admiration which their loveliness called 
forth. 
Before the end of the month (it was on the 
morning of the 18th) I once more heard the 
wagtail’s song from the ground. This time the 
affair was anything but a rehearsal. There 
were two birds,—a lover and his lass, — and 
the wooing waxed fast and furious. For that 
matter, it looked not so much like love-making 
as like an aggravated case of assault and battery. 
But, as I say, the male was warbling, and not 
improbably (so strange are the ways of the 
world), if he had been a whit less pugnacious in 
his addresses, his lady-love, who was plainly well 
