"So no more at present, Respected Fowls, from your most obedient, humble servant,
"The Hybrid."
The three girls were silent for a moment after Gertrude had folded the letter again. Then, "Do you suppose she will really be changed?" asked Peggy. "I—I don't think I want Grace to be changed, do you, girls?"
"That depends!" said Bertha, with her chin on her hands, in her favourite judicial attitude. "Of course it would be despair if we should lose her real, true self. If she could only stay Grace Wolfe, and change her point of view, why, then—"
"That is just what she will do, I feel sure of it," said Gertrude, earnestly. "She has been through an experience—oh, we can't know what it has been, girls, because we are just plain people, you know, and Grace is—well, I think she has genius, or something very like it. If only the power and the sweetness and brightness are turned into helping, you see, instead of hindering—oh, how much she can do! and I believe she's going to do it, too. But come, Fluffy, I must go home. Won't you come, Peggy? We have half an hour before study-time."
Peggy followed only too gladly along the corridor; it was always a treat to spend half an hour in the Owl's Nest. Gertrude was first; she opened the door of her room, and paused on the threshold with a low cry. Bertha and Peggy hurried forward and looked over her shoulder—to see a strange sight.
Something—or somebody—was sitting on the window-seat. Something gray and soft. It had a round feathered head, with two feathery horns jutting from it; it had round bright eyes, which blinked curiously at the astonished girls. Below the head were—arms, were they, or wings? They were feathery too, and they drooped over something that might be a skirt, though no feet were visible. In the gathering twilight the figure sat on the window-seat and blinked, looking like nothing that was in heaven or earth; and the three girls stood and stared, holding each other's hands. Presently the silence was broken.
"Bubo Virginianus!" said a grave, melodious voice from under the feathers. "The Great Horned Owl. Description: Large and strongly organised; ear-tufts large, erectile; bill strong, fully curved; wing rather long; third quill usually longest; tail short; legs and toes—"
"Grace!" cried Gertrude Merryweather.
"Tu whit!" replied the figure. "I may also in this connection remark, tu whoo! This well-known bird is a resident in all the New England schools—I should say States—throughout the year. It is not so common in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island as in the other States, where, in the vast tracts of forest, it is quite abundant. Samuels. Easy there! spare the Plumage!"