But Barnaby sprung lightly in without assistance, and putting his arms about her neck, kissed her a hundred times.
'We have been afield, mother--leaping ditches, scrambling through hedges, running down steep banks, up and away, and hurrying on.

The wind has been blowing, and the rushes and young plants bowing and bending to it, lest it should do them harm, the cowards--and Grip--ha ha ha!--brave Grip, who cares for nothing, and when the wind rolls him over in the dust, turns manfully to bite it--Grip, bold Grip, has quarrelled with every little bowing twig--thinking, he told me, that it mocked him--and has worried it like a bulldog.

Ha ha ha!' The raven, in his little basket at his master's back, hearing this frequent mention of his name in a tone of exultation, expressed his sympathy by crowing like a cock, and afterwards running over his various phrases of speech with such rapidity, and in so many varieties of hoarseness, that they sounded like the murmurs of a crowd of people.
'He takes such care of me besides!' said Barnaby.

'Such care, mother! He watches all the time I sleep, and when I shut my eyes and make-believe to slumber, he practises new learning softly; but he keeps his eye on me the while, and if he sees me laugh, though never so little, stops directly.

He won't surprise me till he's perfect.' The raven crowed again in a rapturous manner which plainly said, 'Those are certainly some of my characteristics, and I glory in them.' In the meantime, Barnaby closed the window and secured it, and coming to the fireplace, prepared to sit down with his face to the closet.