"Oh, birdie, _won't_ you come? Come, dear birdie, oh _do_ come and pouch on my finger. I'll never, never speak c'oss again--never, dear birdie, if only you'll come back and pouch on my finger." It was very melancholy. Very melancholy too was the walking about the garden in vain hopes that birdie might be somewhere near and would fly down again. The whole day passed most sadly. Hoodie's eyes were swollen with crying, and she could scarcely eat any dinner or tea, and her distress naturally was felt by all the nursery party. It was one of the saddest days the children had ever known, and they all went to bed with sorely troubled little hearts. Magdalen too was grieved and sorry. "I blame myself," she said to Hoodie's mother. "Pets are always a risk, and Hoodie is such a strange mixture that one shouldn't run risks with her. I wish I had never suggested her keeping the bird as a pet, but I thought it might be good for her to have something of her very own to care for and attend to." "And so it was," said Hoodie's mother. "It has done her a great deal of good; it has softened her wonderfully. We all noticed it. And even this trouble may do her good; it may teach her really to try to master that sad temper of hers." "I had no idea she would have been so put out at Duke's playing with her bird," Magdalen went on, "or I would not have risked it." "But she _should_ not have been put out at it," said Mrs. Caryll. "You have nothing whatever to reproach yourself with, dear Magdalen. Hoodie _must_ be taught that she cannot be allowed to yield to that selfish, jealous temper." "I know," said Magdalen. "But how are we to teach her? that is the difficulty--the least severity or sternness which does good to other children, seems to rouse her very worst feelings and only to harden her. She is not hardened now, poor little soul, she is perfectly humble. Oh, how I do wish I could find her bird for her!" "Don't trouble yourself so much about it, dear. You really must not," said Mrs. Caryll, as she bade her cousin good night. But unfortunately those things which our friends beg us not to trouble ourselves about are generally the very things we find it the most impossible to put out of our minds. Magdalen could not leave off "troubling" about poor Hoodie. She slept little, and when she did sleep it was only to dream of the lost bird, sometimes that it was found again in all sorts of impossible places--sometimes that Hoodie was climbing a dreadfully high mountain, or attempting to swim across a deep river, where Magdalen felt that she would certainly be drowned,--in search of it. And once she dreamt that the bird flew into her room and perched at the foot of her bed, and when she exclaimed with delight at seeing it again it suddenly began to speak to her, and its voice sounded exactly like Hoodie's. "I have come to say good-bye to you, Maudie's godmother," it said. "Nobody loves me, and I am always naughty, so I'd better go away."