David filled the birds’ drinking fountain for me when he came home to leave his books and get his bat or his football; and I would lie there, watching my visitors, wondering at the variety of birds to be seen in a city yard, and wishing the sparrows’ duels were less on the harmless French order. They never fought because they needed to do it; it was always for something perfectly futile and foolish. They would leave all the food I could scatter to tear one crumb from a neighbor. For it is English sparrow nature never to be satisfied with what they have, to want only what some one else is enjoying, and to get it for themselves if they can. David and I were fully agreed that if anything more hateful was ever created we wished to be spared acquaintance with it. II BIRD CORNERS IT is to Uncle Milton that I owe our return to the country, and all the delights of Bird Corners. Uncle Milton is an inheritance from my great-aunts and Cedarhurst, where he had the finest flowers and the most flourishing vegetable garden in the country. He is a lean old Negro, tall, and straight as a pine. His features are finely cut; and with his gray hair, long gray moustache, regular features, and skin like polished bronze, he makes a distinguished appearance, even in his old blue jeans. He is a real lover of the outdoor world, and the earth and the plants know it. He bends over the flower-beds lovingly, with eyes that see, not dirt, but all dirt’s possibilities of beauty and life. There is never a plant set carelessly nor a seed that falls by chance. No wonder all he touches grows! That he went to town with Great-aunt Letitia, and stayed there afterward with me, spoke eloquently of the strength of affection between us. But after my great-aunt’s death he did not accept the situation without constant protests, and the advice which my youth and ignorance demanded. “You ain’t got no mo’ business in de city dan I is, Miss Lil,” he said spring after spring, as I sat on the grass by the flower-beds and watched his fork go in and out like clock-work, leaving behind it long rows of fresh-turned earth. “You done los’ all dem roses you had in yo’ face at home. Ef Miss Ferginny done lived she wouldn’ put up wid dis foolishness not er minute.” “But the city is more convenient for Mr. Bird,” I would explain. “Some day when he is rich enough he expects to give up business, and then we will go back.”