XII 



THE KINGBIRD 



As a very small boy I spent much time in a 

 certain piece of rather low ground partly grown 

 up to bushes. Here in early spring I picked 

 bunches of pretty pink and white flowers, which 

 I now know to have been anemones. In the 

 same place, a month or two later, I gathered 

 splendid red lilies, and admired, without gather- 

 ing it, a tiny blue flower with a yellow centre. 

 This would not bear taking home, but was al- 

 ways an attraction to me. I should have liked 

 it better still, I am sure, if some one had been 

 kind enough to tell me its pretty name blue- 

 eyed grass. 



Here, also, I picked the first strawberries of 

 the season and the first blueberries. They were 

 luxuries indeed. A " gill-cup " full of either of 

 them was good pay for an hour's search. 



In one corner of the place there were half a 

 dozen or so of apple-trees, and on the topmost 

 branches of these there used to perch continually 

 two or three birds of a kind which some older 



