“Of course, too, I couldn’t go to school, and Mag was my companion all day long. He had a tremendous appetite, and it was as much as I could do to find food for him. If I let him out of his cage he would follow me about, opening his bill and crying for food; and at night he slept outside my bedroom window. I had never had a pet before, and I got to love that bird better than anything in the world, except Nelly; and, indeed, I’m not sure that Nelly was not a bit jealous of him those few weeks.” “_I_ should have been,” said Mrs. Reynardson. “Of course you would, my dear,” said her husband. “Men were deceivers ever, as they say; and boys too. But Mag was to be Nelly’s property as much as mine, by that treaty of alliance, for ever and ever; and that treaty was _never_ broken. But I must go on. “When my ankle was getting well, there came a neat maidservant to the cottage one day, and said that Miss Pringle wished to see me at six o’clock precisely; and wondering what she could want with me, I made myself uncomfortable in my best clothes and limped up the village to her back door. I was shown into a very neat parlour, where Miss Pringle sat in a stiff chair knitting. “She was the old maid of our village, and when I’ve told you that, you know a good bit about her. She was a tightish sort of an old maid—tight in the lips, and tight in her dress, and tight, so they said, in her purse-strings too; but you shall form your own opinion of that presently. She had neat curls on each side of her head, and a neat thin nose, rather large, and she sat a bit forward and looked at you as if she’d found a speck of dirt on you somewhere. I always felt as if I had a smut on my nose when Miss Pringle was speaking to me. “‘Come in, John Reynardson,’ says she. ‘You may stand on that bit of matting by the door. What is the matter with your foot?’ “‘Sprained my ankle, ma’am, climbing a tree with Nelly Green.’ “‘With Nelly Green?’ says Miss Pringle. ‘Then Nelly Green ought to be ashamed of herself! Boys may be monkeys if they like, but not girls. Tell Nelly Green I’m ashamed of her!’” “Did she say that?” asked Mrs. Reynardson. “She did, and she never liked Nelly Green too much after that. She asked me several times afterwards if that monkey-girl was ashamed of herself.” Here the farmer stopped a minute to laugh. “And I always told her she wasn’t. No more she was—not a bit! “Well, she told me frankly that she didn’t like boys—and that was very kind of her!—but I could have told her so myself as soon as ever I was put on the matting and had my face looked at for smuts. Miss Pringle was not one of that soft kind of single ladies who think all boys angels—not she! But, bless her old soul! the Jackdaw, as Nelly and I used to call her, because of her grey head and her black dress and her pecking way—the Jackdaw was nearly as lucky a bird for me as the magpie—in the long run, that is.