When the tourist robins came in winter, we imagined our pet would remember his mate and be anxious to join the birds. But he took no notice, caring not so much for the robins as for the brown towhees who had always kept him company at the back door.
Perhaps he thought his house was small, and if all "his folk" were intending to spend the winter with him he would be crowded "out of house and home." He was not hospitable to them, nor had he "rooms to rent." He not even answered them when the tourists chirped him a last good-bye and went away in early April, after they had eaten up all the pepper berries.
Well, the longest story has an end. When our robin was in his fifth year he died, and we buried him beside our little humming-bird under the fig tree. The bees in the orange blossoms all about him sang him a dirge, and a royal mocking-bird carolled away with all his might.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
GOING TO BED AND GETTING UP.
As we told you before, birds do not live in houses or sleep in bedrooms; though in some parts of the country they build their cradles in little bird-houses and boxes or anything of the sort which you will give them. But here we have never succeeded in making any of them occupy a place which we have prepared for them, though we have made the prettiest little houses, and nailed boxes in cosey places. The western race of the house wren nests with us; so also does the bluebird. But these birds have not become civilized and prefer to stay in the mountains and far-off places.
Western Bluebird.