BIRDS AT THE COTTAGE 325 



prison. It was better to kill them at once if he wanted to 

 destroy them. " Of course your kingfisher died," I said. 

 " No," he replied. He stood the cage on a chair, and 

 the bird was no sooner in it than his little sister, a child 

 of two who was fidgeting round, pulled the door open 

 and out flew the kingfisher ! 



Returning to the cottage, whether from the high 

 down, the green valley, or the silent, shady wood, it 

 always seemed a favourite dwelling or nesting-place of 

 the birds, where indeed they most abounded. Now 

 that bright genial weather had come after the cold and 

 storm to make them happy, the air was full of their 

 chirpings and twitterings, their various little sounds of 

 conversation and soliloquy, with an occasional bright, 

 loud, perfect song. It was generally the wren, whose 

 lyric changes not through all the changeful year, that 

 uttered it. It was this small brown bird, too, that 

 amused me most with the spectacle of his irrepressible 

 delight in the new warmth and sunlight. There were 

 about a dozen wrens at the cottage, and some of them 

 were in the habit of using their old undamaged nests in 

 the ivy and woodbine as snug little dormitories. But 

 they cared nothing for the human inhabitants of the 

 cottage ; they were like small birds that had built their 

 nest in the interstices of an eagles' eyrie, who knew 

 nothing and cared nothing about the eagles. Occasion- 

 ally, when a wren peeped in from the clustering ivy or 

 hopped on to a window-sill and saw us inside, he would 



