At this point a mosquito stung my neck, and, killing it, I held it before her. She snapped at it in a twinkling, but retained it between her mandibles. Whether she would finally have swallowed it I am not able to say (and so must leave undecided a very interesting and important question in economic ornithology), for just then I remembered a piece of banana with which I had been meaning to tempt her. Of this she tasted at once, and, as I thought, found it good; for she transfixed it with her bill, and, quitting her seat, carried it away and deposited it on a branch. But instead of eating it, as I expected to see her do, she fell to fly-catching, while her mate promptly appeared, and as soon as opportunity offered took his turn at brooding. My eyes, meanwhile, had not kept the two distinct, and, supposing that the mother had returned, I stepped up to offer her another drink, but had no sooner filled the spoon than the fellow took flight. At this the female came to the rescue again, and unhesitatingly entered the nest. It was a noble reproof, I thought; well deserved, and very handsomely administered. "Oh, you cowardly dear," I fancied her saying, "he'll not hurt you. See me, now! I'm not afraid. He's queer, I know; but he means well." I should have mentioned that while the squirrel was barking she uttered some very pretty _sotto voce_ notes of two kinds,--one like what I have often heard, and one entirely novel. A man ought to have lived with such a creature, year in and out, and seen it under every variety of mood and condition, before imagining himself possessed of its entire vocabulary. For who doubts that birds, also, have their more sacred and intimate feelings, their esoteric doctrines and experiences, which are not proclaimed upon the tree-top, but spoken under breath, in all but inaudible twitters? Certainly this pet of mine on sundry occasions whispered into my ear things which I had never heard before, and as to the purport of which, in my ignorance of the vireonian tongue, I could only conjecture. For my own part, I am through with thinking that I have mastered all the notes of any bird, even the commonest. I wondered, by the bye, whether my speech was as unintelligible to the greenlet as hers was to me. I trust, at all events, that she divined a meaning in the tones, however she may have missed the words; for I never called without telling her how much I admired her spirit. She was all that a bird ought to be, I assured her, good, brave, and handsome; and should never suffer harm, if I could help it. Alas! although, as the apostle says, I loved "not in word, but in deed and in truth," yet when the pinch came I was somewhere else, and all my promises went for nothing.