The emotion passed off in a summer shower, and when I
went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet landscape after
the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle game of her own
past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry--merrier, notwithstanding
her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.
"Look at that comical sparrow," she said. "Look how he cocks his head
first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is he
bumptious, or what?"
"I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys; and
I suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either."
"Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to school,"
said Connie.
"It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the sparrows,"
I answered. "Look at them now," I exclaimed, as a little crowd of them
suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment before, and exploded
in objurgation and general unintelligible excitement. After some obscure
fluttering of wings and pecking, they all vanished except two, which walked
about in a dignified manner, trying apparently to seem quite unconscious
each of the other's presence.
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