Her eyes filled with unwonted tears, and I had a sudden desire to jerk my jay-bird cousin’s feathers out by the roots. “You’ll just have to train your thoughts to keep away from him, Grace,” I said. “I know you can, for I’ve steered my own clear of a lot of things I simply don’t dare to fool with. Don’t shake your head at me, madam! Do you think Milly doesn’t see that look in your eyes when you sit and think about Cousin Jason? Are you going to let him hurt her?” “No, I’m not,” she said firmly. “I’ll make my eyes behave.” “Then you’ll have to make your thoughts behave behind your eyes. You let Cousin Jason alone. If you’ll quit paying attention to him long enough, he’ll come round; but as long as you give him a chance to rebuff you, he’ll amuse himself doing it.” Grace laughed. “Shall I follow your advice or your example—you door-mat for Cousin Jane?” I laughed myself. “Never mind. We can find out how to do a thing perfectly, many a time, just by doing it the way it shouldn’t be done. And I did send Cousin Jane home once. I know the recording angel put that down to my credit.” We fell to talking of her plans. Milly and her husband are to live with her, he going in to his business daily, like the Peon. But Grace wants them to have this first winter alone together. So as soon as they get back from their wedding trip, and Caro is married, she expects to go away with George’s niece, and spend the winter travelling. The Peon and I will stay at Bird Corners. The children will be gone for five or six weeks, and by the time they come home the Perchery will almost be ready for them to begin feathering their nest—And to think it’s the real Bird Corners, and not Make-Believe at all! * * * * * _October 16th._ The young mocking-birds are learning to sing, and their efforts are altogether charming. They sit apart, crooning, each to himself, trying their score over and over, thoughtfully, with pauses in which they seem to search their memories for forgotten notes. It is as if melody had come with them from the land of dreams, and they were trying to catch and hold the elusive sweetness, and teach it to come at their command. The soft, dreamy music floats through the October sunshine, at once a memory and a hope. It is a song of the garnered years, an inheritance from old days of love and aspiration, and it presages days of love and aspiration yet to be. But more than both of these, it voices the peace of autumn days, when the earth has finished the long year’s toil, and turns to its hard-won rest in the quiet of the misty sunshine. * * * * *