176 IN THE MIDDLE COUNTRY. 



he stood gazing on the ground. Sometimes he 

 flew down and returned at once, then began 

 moving off, a little at a time, still crying, ex- 

 actly as though he were following some one who 

 went slowly. The call, when low, was very 

 sweet and tender; very mournful too, and we 

 got much wrought up over it, wishing as bird 

 students so often do that we could do some- 

 thing to help. He was roused at last by the 

 intrusion of a bird into his domain, and his dis- 

 comfiture of this foe seemed to dispel his un- 

 happy state of mind, for he at once broke out in 

 joyous song, to our great relief. That was not 

 the last exhibition of the wren's idiosyncrasy; 

 he repeated it day after day, and finally he went 

 so far as to interpolate low " dear-r-r's " into his 

 sweetest songs. Perhaps that was his conception 

 of his duty as protector to the family ; if so, he 

 was certainly faithful in doing it. It was ludi- 

 crously like the attitude of some people under 

 similar circumstances. 



While the young father was manifesting his 

 anxiety in this way, the mother showed hers in 

 another ; she took to watching, hardly leaving 

 the place at all. When she had her babies well 

 fed for the moment, she went up the trunk a 

 little, in a loitering way that I had never seen 

 her indulge in before, and a loitering wren is 

 a curiosity. It was plain that she simply wished 



