I saw from the way Eliza kept her eyes on his movements that she was expecting he would do something to hurt me, but in this she was pleasantly disappointed, for he never once touched my cage and cooed as softly when he spoke to me as Polly herself might have done.
I was quite afraid of him at first, for ever since my experience with the wicked schoolboys who clubbed us in the linden trees, and my later experience with Joe, I disliked boys very much.
[Illustration: The Bobolink.] When John Charles had bidden Eliza "good-morning" and tipped his hat again and the door closed after him, she said to me: "Why, Dickey, that was a new kind of a boy! He never once tried to hurt you or to scare you.

It shows that all boys are not rough, and I shall always like John Charles, for he is a little gentleman." To this sentiment I fully agreed, and I thought, "Alas! why are not all boys as gentle as John Charles ?" In a few hours I felt as much at home with Eliza as if I had always lived there, and I was much pleased when I heard her tell Katharine at the supper table the next evening how much she had enjoyed having me with her.
"A bird is ever so much better company than a clock," she said; "though when I'm here by myself I always like to hear the clock tick.

It seems as if I were not so entirely alone.

But a bird is better.

I talked to Dickey to-day and he twittered back.