OUR HOME BIRDS. 
49 
chirping its slender pip. But when the cold grows 
more severe and thick snow covers the ground, it 
approaches our houses, and taps at the window with 
its bill, as if to entreat an asylum, which is cheer- 
fully granted. It repays the favor by the most 
amiable familiarity, gathering the crumbs from the 
table, distinguishing affectionately the people of the 
house, and assuming a warble, not, indeed, so rich 
as that of spring, but more delicate. This it retains 
through all the rigors of the season, to hail eacli 
day the kindness of its host and the sweetness of 
its retreat/ ” 
“ How nice,” said Clara, “ to have dear little birds 
hopping around the table ! I wish our robins would 
do so.” 
“ Our robins do not stay here in winter, dear,” 
replied her governess ; “ the winters in England are 
not so cold as they are in America. It is because 
the English robins are such very domestic birds 
that the stories of ‘Cock Robin’ and the ‘Babes in 
the Wood — who were covered, you remember, with 
leaves by these little birds — came to be written. Our 
own robin has often been kept in a cage, and will 
sing very sweetly in confinement; but we cannot 
equal the story of a redbreast that belonged, with 
a host of other feathered pets, to an English gar- 
dener. The story says : ‘ At the head of this feath- 
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