FRIENDS IX FEATHERS 



but instead it had folded its wings and before the day was over 

 was clinging to the twigs with its feet. Then I took courage 

 and went to work in earnest. I put it in a cool shaded place, 

 adding hard-boiled egg thinned almost to liquid to its diet, and 

 by the third morning it could walk and had climbed on the edge 

 of the nest. When I saw that, "It is going to get well, sure as 

 fate!" I cried to Molly-Cotton. 



"It's going to get well! It's going to get well!" exulted the 

 Girlie, dancing for joy. 



Straightway she exacted a promise that she should be the one 

 to open the door and give it freedom, which surely was her right. 

 Then she thought of another world to conquer. 



The night before Bob had brought me a little reddish-brown 

 mother bat, weighted with four babies clinging to her body. 

 I was to photograph them that day, then put them back where 

 they had been before night. Molly-Cotton thought the bat 

 should be fed also. She argued that if the bat had been free the 

 night before, her mate would have fed her and with those four 

 babies to care for she must be almost famished. So I was called 

 upon, in all confidence, to tell what bats ate. 



I told her we could not get for a bat, in daytime, what it 

 found on wing at night, but I thought it could do no possible 

 hurt, so I suggested fresh, warm milk. Molly-Cotton took a 

 nickel from her purse and sped to a neighbour's for milk, while I 

 whittled out a tiny wooden paddle. We dipped this into the 

 milk and held it to the bat's nose. She instantly seized it be- 

 tween her sharp little teeth sucking and gnawing at it. She 

 would not let go, so we took the Humming-bird's spoon and 

 dropped milk a drop at a time on the paddle. That bat turned 

 up her head and drank and drank like a famished creature. 



We had a splendid chance to study her face. It was shaped 

 like a young pig's, only natter. She had a small, round, flat 



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