At the end of a couple of weeks he had a pretty fair shirt on his back, of delicate down, softer than any shirt of wool that ever warmed a human baby's body. And the mother stood on the edge of the basket and admired it. She didn't make it, of course, but she was in some way responsible for it, and no doubt felt proud of the bit of fancy work. She noticed, also, that the eyes of the little one did not bulge so much as they did, and a tiny slit appeared at the center, widening slowly, until one happy hour they opened fairly out, and "the baby had eyes." But they were tired eyes to start with, like the eyes of most young things, and they wearied with just a glimpse of the light. So the lids closed, and it was several days before Dicky actually took in the situation as he ought. There being no other baby to crowd, he kept to the nest longer than birds commonly do, and when at last he got on his feet he was pretty well fledged. Now, when he had obtained his first youthful suit of clothes, his mother looked surprised, as did also his father, it is to be supposed, he in his solitary cage hanging close to the other. Both parent birds were pure-bred Teneriffe canaries, the male as green as emerald and the female more dusky and lighter. By a strange freak of nature, which happens sometimes by breeding these birds in captivity, the young fellow was bright yellow, of the tint of a ripe lemon, beak white, and eye black, while his feet and ankles retained their original baby pinkness. Oh, he was a pretty bird! But it was foreordained in his case, as in similar cases, that he should not be so sweet a singer as though his color had been like that of his parents. He was not conscious of this fact, however, and it mattered not to him that he was yellow instead of green. Nor did he care in the least that the price of him was marked down to a dollar and a half when it should have been double. Away he went in a new cage, after his new mistress had paid the sum named into the hand of his former owner. He peeked out of the bars as he was carried along swinging at every step; that is, he peeped out as well as he could, considering that a cloth was covered over the cage. The wind blew the cloth aside now and then and Dicky saw wonderful sights--sights that were familiar and "so soul-appealing." Not that he, in his own short life, had ever seen such sights, but that somehow in his little being were vague memories or conceptions of what his ancestors had seen. It is hard to explain it, but everything cannot be explained. When we come to one of these things we call it "instinct," with a wise shake of our heads, just as we were told to say "Jerusalem" when we came to a word we couldn't pronounce when we were very young and read in the Second Reader.