"Oh! keep back--quiet--maybe, 'twill settle down again," pleaded the merle. "Hasn't it the face of a cunning little kitten? Such a wise, blinking, round-eyed kitten! Its head is reddish, not gray--and the rufous markings on its breast, too! Oh-h! I wonder if the boys did catch it in the woods and thought it was a good 'henkyl' to put down our chimney?" But that, as the girls knew, would remain as blind a puzzle as the long, screened dormitory was to the dazzled owl, unable to see clearly in daylight, out visiting when he should have been in bed in the cool, dark hollow of a tree. "Oo-oo-oo-ooo ... cluck!" it cooed and grumbled, pressing a dappled breast and wide-spread wings against a screen, the mottled back-feathers ruffling into a huge breeze-swept pompon. "See! He's playing he's a big owl." "Oh! I wonder if he'd let me--let me catch him." Jessie sighed yearningly. "Do-o, and we'll tame him--keep him for a mascot!" It was a general acclamation. And the feathered Santa, apparently having no objection to this rele--finding himself no longer a waif in Babel--finally settled down again on the glittering head-rail of Una's cot, his fluffy breast to the outdoor sunlight, his solemn, kittenish face--the head turning round on a pivot without the movement of a muscle in the body--confronting sagely the delighted girls. "Isn't he the dearest thing? Oh! I'm glad the boys played the trick--if it was the boys. I'd rather think he played Santa himself." There was no inkling in Jessie's mind, as, so murmuring and softly barefoot, she stole up to the visitor, now motionless as a painted bird, of a much worse trick that those freakish Henkyl Hunters might play, a girl abetting them, too--shocking fact--before night fell again upon the pearly Bowl. "Oo-oo-ooo! Boo! See me reverse!" It seemed to be what the owl was saying to the maidens as he turned the tables on them again and again with that teetotum trick of his swivel neck. But he did not scream any more or offer the least objection when the merle took him to her tender breast, cooing reassurance. "There! you've got a new singing teacher, Jess--a little screech owl. Little! My! he's big for a small-eared owl, isn't he?--nearly a foot long. Brush the camouflage off him--the smuts of the chimney!" "Well--well, whether he enacted Santa Claus of his own accord, or whether he didn't--" thus Tanpa broke in on the last flow of speech which was a medley--"he's brought us one gift, anyway, the gift of a glorious day for our annual White Birch celebration." It did prove a banner day, from the breakfast out of doors on the wide piazza in that matchless warmth of early summer when buds are bursting, trees singing themselves into leaf--for "all deep things are song--" when the inquisitive breeze peeps longingly into the yellow heart of the first wild rose and May is bourgeoning, flowering, into the joy of June.