i6 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



thinking of the mocking-birds — ^never, in moments 

 of extreme agitation, fall into this confusion and use 

 singing notes that express agreeable emotions to 

 express such as are painful. But in the mocking-bird 

 the primitive harsh and grating cries have not been 

 lost nor softened to sounds hardly to be distin- 

 guished from those that are emitted by way of song. 



Ill 



By this time all the birds were breeding, some 

 already breeding a second time. And now I began 

 to suspect that they were not quite so undisturbed 

 as the old dame had led me to believe j that they 

 had not found a paradise in the village after all. 

 One morning, as I moved softly along the hedge 

 in my nightingales' lane, all at once I heard, in the 

 old grassy orchard to which it formed a boundary, 

 swishing sounds of scuttling feet and half-suppressed 

 exclamations of alarm ; then a crashing through 

 the hedge, and out, almost at my feet, rushed and 

 leaped and tumbled half a dozen urchins, who had 

 suddenly been frightened from a birds'-nesting raid. 

 Clothes torn ; hands and faces scratched with 

 thorns ; hatless, their tow-coloured hair all dis- 

 ordered, or standing up like a white crest above 



