cheek and brilliant eyes, I read what made me
in a moment forget the cry of "Fine, fine, fine
firewood." I told the message that gladdened
the faint fast beating heart, and encouraged her
to hope for letters, and heard her say, "I must
go to him. Better tend him wounded, or bury
him dead, than live the dying life I am living
here."

I began to falter words of encouragement
that I did not feel, when the musical cry again
burst on my ear.

"It is my poor bird!" she said—"my
mocking-bird. He breaks my heart with his songs of
home, and he startles everybody with his
imitations."

I looked up at the western window, and there
hung the bird in a prodigious cage: just the giant
bird-house that a mocking-bird ought always to
have. Lazily removing his long figure from one
side of the cage to the other, a few times, he
began to pour forth a song composed of the
music of all the birds he had heard in London.
He ended his brilliant mélange with his own
sweet notes, which are exceedingly beautiful.
The lady regarded him with a tender interest,
with which was mingled her absent husband
and lost home. I led her to talk of him, for I
thought I saw that though an object of painful
interest, he still served to distract his mistress
from her anxiety and misery.

"There is almost a human interest about
him," she said; "he mimics us so well. He
has a sharp short cry like the baby when his
sister takes something from him, and he revels
in mimicking poor Jip. The other day I heard
Jip cry terribly, and I came hurrying down to
see to him, quite sure that he had got into some
unusual difficulty. Jip was asleep on the mat
outside the drawing-room door, not even
noticing his own yelping, and there was the bird
doing the dreadful imitation to perfection. At
first Jip used to notice him, but he is quite
accustomed to his noise now." As if to illustrate
what she was saying, the bird here began a
wonderful series of performances, the most difficult
of which, to me, seemed the click of castanets.
Nothing was difficult to him, after he had
put his head on one side, listened, and apparently
decided how it was to be done. He did not
practise the sound, but at once got it right
in his mind, and brought it forth like a
viviparous production, perfect in all its parts.
When he had clicked the castanets, and whistled
a tune to match, he again edified me with the
"Fine, fine, fine firewood" cry, immediately
setting off its sonorous music with the shrill
cracked quaver that a child evokes from a penny
whistle. Then he gave the cry of the milk-
woman when she rang the bell, then the cry of
muffins, and then water-cresses. Presently the
cat mewed as if both the lady's children were
pulling it at once, and then Jip got into trouble,
and lastly, the baby cried. "You should hear
him whistle my husband's tunes," said the lady,
her eyes overflowing. "Dear Arthur could not
beat him at whistling Dixie, or Red, White,
and Blue."

I whistled first the one and then the other of
these tunes, and presently the bird was whistling
Dixie to a charm, and the poor lady was weeping
to the melody, as if it were only made to
make people weep. Nor was she at all
comforted with the Red, White, and Blue.

"I wish I had left him with Arthur. I wish
I had never tamed him. He does not seem like
a bird to me, here in London. He seems like a
ghost of the past—like somebody's spirit
imprisoned in a bird. I hear him whistle Arthur's
tunes, and I almost think my husband has come
in, as he used to in our old home, always so
cheerful. I cannot bear the strange sweet
imitation in my room, and so I keep him down
here; but I shall not have him long. He has
done well during the summer; you know we
came in June; but he begins to mope. To-day
is one of his bright days. He will not live
through the winter; he will not live through
next month. He will never survive unhappy
November. I wish I had left him at home,
or had never taken him from the nest! He
was such a little lump when I took him, with
no promise of the long body and longer tail he
has now. His mouth was always open, and he
screamed like one file filing another, unless I
fed him almost continually. He was always
swallowing a paste made of mashed potato and
yolks of eggs rolled up into the form of worms,
and dropped into his gaping mouth."

"And what does he eat now?"

"He will eat almost anything that I eat, but
I feed him mostly on brown bread and milk,
which he likes better than eggs, or fresh meat,
or anything. He will leave his chicken or his
beefsteak untouched, and eat a saucer of brown
bread and milk in the day. Every day he goes,
into his bath tub and takes his bath, and makes
his toilet like a gentleman, and every day his
house has to be thoroughly cleansed, or he would
soon die. His cage seems large, but mocking-
birds never thrive in small cages; and I think
of their freedom. Then he cannot be as
content in confinement as if he had been born in a
cage, and his parents before him. I wish he
were in the orange-grove in my own dear home,
or that he had the chance of stealing Japan
plums at the end of our brief Charleston winter.
Our garden used to be as full of music as the
opera, and a great deal sweeter to me, though I
dearly love music."

"Charleston really seems home, then, to you,"
I said. "I thought English people were merely
foreign residents; that they were never at home
anywhere but in England."

She smiled very faintly, and said, "I was
taken from my home young, like my mocking-
bird. But O far more than that! I went
to Arthur's home, and, O, it was a sunny
home!"

I tried to speak comfortingly and hopefully.
She only said she would go to her husband.

"And the bird?" I asked. "O, he will die
next month."

As I was leaving, the bird again favoured me
with Dixie, and then with "Fine, fine, fine