dipping their chubby hands and scattering the corn amongst the ducks
and chickens with unspeakable glee. But those ingrates the poultry
don't seem so pleased and thankful as they ought to be; they
mistrust their young feeders. All domestic animals dislike
children, partly from an instinctive fear of their tricks and their
thoughtlessness; partly, I suspect, from jealousy. Jealousy seems a
strange tragic passion to attribute to the inmates of the basse
cour,--but only look at that strutting fellow of a bantam cock
(evidently a favourite), who sidles up to his old mistress with an
air half affronted and half tender, turning so scornfully from the
barley-corns which Annie is flinging towards him, and say if he be
not as jealous as Othello? Nothing can pacify him but Mrs. Allen's
notice and a dole from her hand. See, she is calling to him and
feeding him, and now how he swells out his feathers, and flutters
his wings, and erects his glossy neck, and struts and crows and
pecks, proudest and happiest of bantams, the pet and glory of the
poultry yard!

In the meantime my own pet May, who has all this while been peeping
into every hole, and penetrating every nook and winding of the dell,
in hopes to find another rabbit, has returned to my side, and is
sliding her snake-like head into my hand, at once to invite the
caress which she likes so well, and to intimate, with all due
respect, that it is time to go home. The setting sun gives the same
warning; and in a moment we are through the dell, the field, and the
gate, past the farm and the mill, and hanging over the bridge that
crosses the Loddon river.

What a sunset! how golden! how beautiful! The sun just
disappearing, and the narrow liny clouds, which a few minutes ago