"Twaddles!" Nora coming into her orderly kitchen was amazed.
"Glory be, child, are you making toast of yourself?"

The shoes gave a final wriggle and Twaddles deftly backed out of
the oven, turning to show a flushed face and a pair of dark,
dancing eyes.

"What are ye doing?" insisted Norah curiously. "The sponge cake
was baked and put away hours ago."

"Oh, I don't want any of your sponge cake," Twaddles assured her
loftily, forgetting, perhaps, the many times he had hung around
the kitchen door during Norah's baking and teased for "just one
bite." "I'm life-saving, Norah."

"You're what?" asked Norah incredulously.

Twaddles sat down comfortably on the stone hearth before the old-
fashioned coal range and began to clean caked mud from the soles
of his shoes.

"It's a robin," he explained. "A sick robin, Norah. I found him on
the grass, and he was too cold and wet to fly. Mother used to put
'em in the oven when she was a little girl and that made 'em all
well again."

"You'll scorch him," said Norah, stooping down to look. "That oven
is nearly hot enough to bake biscuit in, Twaddles. Wait, I'll wrap
your robin up in cotton and we'll put him on the shelf warmer;
that's about the temperature he needs."