6 
THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
and then ? No, I want no meddlesome fingers or prying 
eyes in my minute preserves. But I like to note, now 
that all this serious business is over and done with, just 
where they built, my pleasant little garden-folk, and to 
see their variously-fashioned nests, so deftly made, and— 
sometimes—so diplomatically placed. 
The yellow aconite will be flowering under foot here 
before long with its golden, green-befrilled buds, and the 
snowdrops that I have been at some pains to naturalise 
should make a brave show by and by. Overhead there 
is a continuous soft stir and bustle of birds : the blue and 
silver tits with their demure black velvet hoods and their 
elfin airs and graces are mighty busy; up and down and 
in and out they glance, most delicately important of 
mien, and I wonder now if this may be the family that was 
reared last spring in the old leaden urn beneath the large 
ilex. Very numerous and very vocal was that candid 
brood; it seemed as though the fledgelings were demand¬ 
ing food with menaces the whole day through, and even 
my own humble wriggling offerings appeared to find 
favour in their midst. There was a secret so flagrantly 
open I could not choose but know it, yet I do not think 
they fared any the worse for their indiscretion. Those 
dainty little brown sprites, the wrens, are full of mysterious 
activities, and bold robin with his breast at its very 
brightest orange-tawny meets me at every turn. Fleet¬ 
ing glints of green and gold betoken the shy presence ot 
the finches, and silent thrush and blackbird set about 
their avocations with an air of hardihood they did not 
show in spring. The tiny running streamlet is a true 
benefaction to them all. 
