Sir,—I learn from my friend Mr. Scotton of Eaton Place that you supplied him a year ago with a full clutch of British Kite’s eggs. I hope you will be able to do the same for me this year, as you know where they are to be obtained. I have in my cabinet full clutches of nearly all the British-breeding birds of prey, but the Kite is now so rare that I had despaired of adding its eggs to my collection till my friend gave me your address. I am ready to offer you twenty-five guineas for a clutch properly authenticated as British, and if you should be able to get me a bird as well I will give you ten guineas more, and employ you to set it up. I trust this offer will be satisfactory to you. Yours truly, William Gatherum. “Satisfactory! I should think so,” cried the eldest son. “Satisfactory! Why, you’ll get fifty guineas, if you ask for them, Stephen,” said the excited mother. “Well, we could pay the rent anyhow with what he offers,” said Stephen, as he put the letter in his pocket. “But to tell you the truth, Susan, I don’t much like the job. I’ve a tender feeling about those eggs.” “Don’t like the job!” she cried, looking at him almost fiercely. “Why, what’s the matter with it? Look at these children—haven’t they as much right to be fed as young Kites?” And Stephen, looking on his young birds, felt a twinge at his heart, while the fledglings opened all their young mouths at once in a chorus of protest. “It’s a bad trade,” he said at last: “I wish I had never taken it up. So long as I collected in foreign parts, it was all very well, and I was young and independent; but now I’m getting old, Susan, and the travellers won’t take me with them; and here in England there’s no price for anything but what’s a rarity—and rarities do me as much harm as good. I tell you, Susan, those Kite’s eggs last year were the very mischief: it got about that I had taken them, and my name’s in bad odour with the best naturalists. It’s those private collectors, with their clutches and their British-killed specimens that I have to live by now; and a precious set they are! What’ll they do with all their cabinets, I should like to know! Sell them to be scattered all over the place! Stow them away in a garret and forget all about them! Die some day, and have the public-house people picking ’em up cheap at your sale, to put in a glass case in the parlour! It’s infernal; I don’t like this job, Susan.” Susan’s tears were beginning to run down. The sun had shone upon her for a moment, and then suddenly gone behind a cloud again. Two or three of the children, seeing their mother troubled, began to roar. Poor Stephen swallowed his tea, and fled from the confusion to his workshop, followed by his son. “We must do this job, dad,” said Tom, when they were alone.