50 
NATURE NOTES 
in the summer of 1897, when Miss Walton was sketching in the 
garden. A robin haunted the scene of her sketches, and inti- 
mated his willingness to receive hospitality by picking up the 
breadcrumbs that fell from her erasures. These overtures were 
met half-way with offerings of cheese, cut small and fine. 
“ Ruby ” soon lost all fear of humanity, and became a tender 
and affectionate little bird-friend, welcoming his lady’s visits 
with much joy, enlivening the sketching times with beautiful 
bursts of song, and showing many pretty traits of character. 
On one occasion he displayed some pardonable irritation 
against a shrew-mouse, which crept on Miss Walton’s lap and 
sampled his cheese in a most annoying way. Ruby ruffled his 
feathers and reproved the mouse, but in vain ; then, with puffed- 
out breast and open wings, he invited him to come on and see 
which was the better man ; but the irresponsible creature only 
waltzed frivolously after his own tail. So as there was nothing to 
be done with the aggressor, either by remonstrance or intimida- 
tion, Ruby lost no time over storing the cheese in the only safe 
place for such good things. 
The enjoyment of Ruby’s sweet company was measured, 
alas, b}" the space of a few brief weeks. There is no fold, 
however w^atched and tended.” One day a vagrant cat was 
spied in the shrubbery, and driven away with well-merited 
contumely ; but Ruby came no more. The ensuing winter 
brought a gang of robins to the windows in quest of sustenance. 
They quarrelled terrifically for Miss Walton’s favours, but I 
think only two became in any degree tame. Of these, Robin 
Adair .soon followed the example of his namesake in the song, 
while Rob Roy flourishes to this day in a grove near the front 
of the house. Always a bold rather than a tame bird, and by 
no means affectionate, he would never learn to fly up on to the 
hand, but has to be fed on the ground from the little box of 
cheese without which Miss Walton would not dare to cross the 
threshold or show her face at a window. Still, in the winter, 
he frequently condescended to ride from the bicycle house to 
the front door on the handle bar of her machine ; and though 
he has the name of a cateran, he has the manners of good 
society, for, one spring day, he brought a shy little Helen 
Macgregor up to the front door and introduced her to the 
lady — and the cheese-box. 
The summer of 1898 brought forth a contingent of downy, 
half-grown creatures whose speckled breasts bore witness to the 
robin’s kinship with the thrush. One after another fell captives 
to blandishments and cheese. Ruby ii., Raggie, a little hen-bird 
so called from her fluffy and dishevelled plumage, a minute 
person called Snatcher, Bien-Aime the Beautiful, and Big Boy, 
a portly fellow whose distrust of human methods and intentions 
rendered him a hard conquest. When their breasts turned red 
their hearts grew hot and fierce, and awful battles were waged 
until, by who knows what system of delimitation, the garden 
