A MAY MORNING. 393 



or life that I fell, if I did not exactly think it, to be a deed 

 unmeet, unsuited. So we soon gave up the " fritillary," leav- 

 ing him to go where fancy or his silver-spotted wings might 

 bear him, and sitting down upon a bank, all blue and red 

 with speedwell and herb-Robert, we watched with pleasure 

 more unalloyed and quiet the movements of a humming-bird 

 hawk admiring how, in his morning flight, he kept darting 

 from flower to flower, or hung suspended upon quivering wing 

 as he pilfered his breakfast from their nectared stores. 



Numerous besides these was the insect company which en- 

 livened that morning walk ; but of only one among them did 

 we make a captive, and that was a cricket a house-cricket 

 one, withal, deficient of a leaping leg perhaps the peculiar 

 chirper, the familiar spirit, of Dolly 's hearth, which we found 

 basking on a sunny pale. When my little cousin proposed 

 first to take it home, "Lucy," said I, " remember this is sum- 

 mer, and in summer-time the cricket, like ourselves, loves the 

 sunshine better than a kitchen fire/' 



" Yes, but then Dolly would so like to have him and yet, 

 poor thing!" Lucy was, in short, divided betwixt her love 

 for one and her love for all God's creatures ; but the former 

 conquered, and the cricket, whether our old acquaintance or 

 a new, became our involuntary companion. Mrs. Dove did 

 not refuse reception to the wanderer or the stranger ; but as 

 she rose from stooping to place it in the snug little cranny 

 once occupied by himself or fellow, she shook her head. 



