164 IN BIRD LAND. 
she would not, and there was no use in talking; she 
flitted, half contemptuously, to a more distant bush. 
That proud cockney need not think she cared for 
him! She wasn’t going to lose her heart to every 
lovelorn swain who came along. But, mark you, 
when I tried to separate them, by driving one to 
one side of the path and the other to the opposite 
side, the little hypocrite contrived every time, with 
admirable finesse, to flit over toward her knightly 
suitor. Three times the experiment brought the 
same result. Her maidenly reserve had a good deal 
of calculation in it, after all, innocent as she appeared. 
Perhaps she had conned Longfellow’s wise quatrain : 
“ How can [ tell the signals and the signs 
By which one heart another heart divines? 
How can I tell the many thousand ways 
By which it keeps the secret it betrays?” 
That the course of true love does not always run 
smooth in the bird world as elsewhere, goes without 
saying. ‘There are feuds and jealousies. Sometimes 
two beaux admire the same belle, and then there 
may be war to the death. I have seen two rival 
song-sparrows clutch in the air, peck and claw at 
each other viciously, and come down to the ground 
with a thud that must have knocked the breath out 
of them for a few moments. Incredible as it may 
seem, an acute observer of bird life declares that the 
females are most likely to quarrel and fight over 
their lovers. At such times the male stands by, 
looks on approvingly, and lets them fight it out, no 
