Catherine, always overwhelmed as she was, not with bracing work, but with a dreary surplus of vacant time on her hands, in spite of her reading, was fortunately capable of revelling, in her desultory fashion, in this double resource. She would leave Dante in the saddest region of the Inferno, the Jungfrau when the Black Knight had her at last, Mary Barton pursuing the outward-bound ship, Janet in the agony of her repentance, to take refuge in her own section of the living world. She would play for half-an-hour with Pepper and Crab or the youngest kitten. She would watch the eight rooks whose big, black-coated presence always seemed to Catherine to lend a solid dignity to the fry of small birds, just as the rooks’ deep cawing supplied a solemn diapason to the lighter music of the orchestra in the shrubbery on a bright morning in spring, or a quiet evening in early summer. Catherine stoutly maintained the innocence of the rooks against the respectful representations of the modest under-gardener, that the birds did not confine their bill of fare to worms and the wide genus grub, as she was fain to assert. And after all, the alleged depredations committed by the rooks, were as nothing to the frightful accusations brought against a pair of demure sinners of Cushat doves, which were like the apple of Catherine’s eye, for whose condescension in coming of their own sweet will and building a nest in an old Scotch fir, and their affability in indulging in soft cooings, she could never be sufficiently grateful. Catherine scouted the idea of replacing the wild pigeons by a couple of their tame kindred, which should be housed in a neat little pigeon-house, submit to be fed with grain and crumbs from feasts, or fly far a-field for their meals instead of proceeding with the marauding instincts of the most incorrigible of thieves, and alas! in spite of their sleek, iridescent plumage, and the tender sentiment associated with them, of the greediest feeders belonging to the feathered tribes, to devastate whole rows of newly-sown peas and ‘breaks’ of young cauliflowers. What did Catherine care for peas and cauliflowers compared to her Cushat doves? But Mrs. Hilliard, though she found some food for laughter in the doves’ exploits and Catherine’s dismay, was not so indifferent to the wreck of her vegetables. Catherine was very much obliged to Oliver Constable for telling her, though it was in a measure another disillusion in the way the information was put, that wood-pigeons were the most arrant cowards in addition to being the most disgraceful thieves, for the most transparent sham—the least life-like scarecrow—sufficed to hold the robbers at bay.