_April 5th._ Caro is in the window-seat, feather-stitching the missionary petticoats, with one eye on the birds in the yard. The jays have always roused her special ire; and yesterday one flew to the hackberry, in plain sight, with a little naked nestling dead in his wicked bill, tucked it coolly under his toes against the bark, and devoured it before our eyes. This morning, in the intervals of courtship, they have diverted themselves with crumb-snatching. They sit on a limb above the scattered morsels where a dozen or more birds are feasting. There is bread in abundance for all, but the jays love hectoring even better than eating. One will watch till some bird picks up a crumb, and then drop like lead upon his astonished victim. The unfortunate drops the crumb, of course; and before he collects his scattered wits the jay is back aloft with the morsel safe under his toes, picking leisurely. Caro sat laughing and scolding till a little red-brown wren flew down and was pounced upon in a twinkling. The wren dropped his crumb, but turned upon the bully with lightning quickness and a volcanic explosion of wrath utterly out of proportion to his size. The big bird, amazed at the onset, flew up to his perch in a panic, and Caro clapped her hands. “Oh, grand! grand!” she cried; “don’t I wish Milly Wood were here to see! I told her yesterday if she’d lay Cousin Jason out she could manage him: and just look at that blessed wren.” “Milly isn’t a wren, though,” I said: “she hasn’t a glimmering of the wren’s gift of speaking his mind. Look at the wood-thrush, dear; you see the difference? When the wood-thrush turns on a jay, I’ll have hopes of Grace and Milly—and not before.” The two wood-thrushes have been in the yard for days, the shyest, gentlest of creatures, ready to fly off at the flutter of a leaf. They have not touched the crumbs yet, but hop nearer every day. The jay watched one of them extract a worm from the soil, however, and lit upon him plummet-fashion. The wood-thrush dropped his half-swallowed morsel and fled in a panic to the black ash, where my glasses revealed him, his breast feathers bristling with terror, a mere puff-ball of fear. “That’s Milly,” I said.