OUR COUNTRY LIFE 



made her nervous, and the carpet sweeper actually ter- 

 rified her. Curiously enough she did not mind the 

 typewriter at all, and would sit on my shoulder when 

 I was at work and even perch on the carriage 

 of the machine, not stirring when I pushed it over to 

 begin a line. She was perfectly at home on my desk, 

 biting the point of my pencil as I wrote, carrying off 

 one by one my pens, my pins, my rubber bands, which 

 she would play with by the hour, scattering them over 

 the floor. One of her favorite occupations was to lift 

 the lid of a silver stamp-box and abstract one by one the 

 red stamps only, carrying them off in her beak, 

 shaking them and picking them up again to see ap- 

 parently if they were still sticky! 



She was as companionable as a bird could possibly 

 be, always chirping in answer to my call except when 

 mischievously hiding; she would play "peek-a-boo" 

 around a vase on the mantel shelf with an apparent 

 zest as keen as a child's, and the instant I stretched 

 myself lazily on the chaise-longue with the newspaper, 

 over would come Miss Nan to alight on its precarious 



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