48 LETTERS TO MARCO vm 



netting, unless you raise it and make a dash, 

 he will refuse to budge, merely hopping along 

 farther away. When he alights on a branch 

 or on the lawn, he raises his expanded tail up 

 and down in the most conceited fashion, and 

 indeed, were it not for his handsome figure 

 and something Shakespeare said of his orange 

 tawny bill, I should positively hate him. 



The people here have a curious supersti- 

 tion about the wandering German bands that 

 visit us at times. It is that they invariably 

 bring rain. When they see them crossing 

 the bridge they say, " There come the 

 Germans, it will rain to-morrow." My 

 gardener firmly believes in this. I suppose 

 it is the old spirit of barbarism that lingers 

 in the country, which in old times used to 

 burn witches and shrew mice. 



I am amused with watching the ways of 

 worms. If you turn over a heap of rotten 

 leaves, the large fat worms that are dis- 

 covered remain quite still, trusting thus to 

 escape ^observation, but if you take a stone 



