38 A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 



" he '11 not hurt you. See me, now ! I 'm 

 not afraid. He 's queer, I know ; but he 

 means well." 



I should have mentioned that while the 

 squirrel was barking she uttered some very 

 pretty sotto voce notes of two kinds, one 

 like what I have often heard, and one en- 

 tirely novel. 



A man ought to have lived with such a 

 creature, year in and out, and seen it under 

 every variety of mood and condition, before 

 imagining himself possessed of its entire 

 vocabulary. For who doubts that birds, 

 also, have their more sacred and intimate 

 feelings, their esoteric doctrines and ex- 

 periences, which are not proclaimed upon 

 the tree-top, but spoken under breath, in 

 all but inaudible twitters ? Certainly this 

 pet of mine on sundry occasions whispered 

 into my ear things which I had never heard 

 before, and as to the purport of which, in 

 my ignorance of the vireonian tongue, I 

 could only conjecture. For my own part, 

 I am through with thinking that I have 

 mastered all the notes of any bird, even the 

 commonest. 



I wondered, by the bye, whether my 



