birds who had loved for love only, and not because their wives were beautiful, kept this beauty and added it to their own. Their wives did not want it back again, for love was enough for them. But the ones who had loved their wives, only because of their beauty, had to give it them back, for otherwise they would not have been able to go on loving them, and that would have been very awkward indeed. That is why, in some birds, the males and females are as beautiful as each other, whilst in others, the males are twice as beautiful as the females. As I told you, this is an explanation which does as well for any other bird as it does for the Birds of Paradise, and, if you like it, you can believe in it till you have grown up from a simple little child into a complicated clever person. So now there are six Birds of Paradise that your mother has promised not to wear in her hats, not in any hat that she buys or has given to her, whether it has the whole skin of one in it, or only just a few feathers, or even one. She will not buy such a hat, and she will not go into a shop to ask the price of it. She will have nothing to do with it whatever, because she has promised. But now, do you not see that, as your dear mother has only promised about six kinds of Birds of Paradise, and as there are some forty or fifty kinds in the world, she might easily buy a hat that had some kind of Bird of Paradise in it, without its being any of these six? How much better it would be, then, if your dear, dear mother were to promise never to wear a hat that had any kind of Bird of Paradise in it. And I am sure she will, now that you have explained to her about the wicked little demon, and how much more beautiful these Birds of Paradise are when they are alive, and how happy they are, too, and how their wives want them, to look at, and how there will be no more of them left, soon, if people keep on killing them, just to put into hats. Just talk to her about it a little, and then throw your arms round her neck and say: "Oh mother, do _promise_ never to wear a hat that has the feathers of _any_ Bird of Paradise in it." There! And now she has promised. Well, you see how easy it is. CHAPTER VII About Humming-Birds, and Some More Explanations Perhaps, when I was telling you about the Birds of Paradise and how very, very beautiful they are, you thought they were the most beautiful birds in the whole world. They are nearly, but not quite. There are the Humming-birds--_they_ are even more beautiful. At least they are more like jewels, and the Indians who live in the countries where they are found call them "living sunbeams." "By western Indians living sunbeams named."