ROBIN REDBREAST 103 



sofa, and made a circuit nearly round my head. 

 I felt nattered, and thought it was a mark of 

 affection from my little friend. But the second 

 time another person was on the sofa ; and I am 

 inclined to think that the attraction was a tall 

 figure of Dante's Beatrice hanging over the sofa. 

 She is clothed in a long flowing garment of bright 

 scarlet over a white tunic, and stands against a 

 bright sky. From the colouring, the picture is as 

 likely to attract a robin as it once did a little boy 

 of about three years old, who was sitting to me 

 for his portrait. ' That's a nice girl,' he remarked, 

 peeping round me and my easel. The robin loves 

 scarlet, I suppose, or he would not be scarlet ; and 

 I judge so too from the way in which he now and 

 then looks down at his own waistcoat. 



November 15, 1885. 



I doubt whether it is this same robin (more 

 likely it is one of its children) that now feeds at 

 my window, and has done so for more than a 

 month. His ways are different ; or hers I think 

 it is a hen, from its want of boldness towards other 

 birds, and from the delicate, almost whispered, 

 song that it sings to me now and then. It calls 

 me to the window with a peculiar sharp little 

 chirp that I do not think it uses on other occasions. 

 I hear it at once ; and if I do not go at once to 



