all over my body under my wings. And that was delightful. It was a new sensation, and a good and pleasant one. I felt so fresh and bright afterwards that every day, directly Fessor came into the room after lunch, I was ready for a bath. He nearly always sprinkled the sand over me, and he must have enjoyed it almost as much as I did, for sometimes he stayed with me at the sand pile a full half-hour.

Chapter V
On the Fessor’s Desk and My Hiding-Place

Fessor used to spend an awful lot of time at his desk. The time he wasted there was more than I could ever tell, for he would be hours at a time doing nothing but moving that pen across the paper, making those nasty little dark scratches that in time I learned were called writing. When he came into his den and sat down at the desk I would come to his feet and call, and he would lower his hand for me to jump into, and then he would lift me up on the desk. I generally hunted first for a few pinion nuts, after which I wanted Fessor to play with me. Sometimes he was so busy with his “paper scratching” that he wouldn’t reply when I chirped to him. Then I got right on his paper, and hopped along between the hand that held his blotter and the hand with which he wrote, and there, right under his very nose, and generally on the spot where he wanted to write, would stand and ask him why he didn’t play with me. Sometimes he gently pushed me aside or lifted me out of his way, but generally he smiled at me—and I did love to see him smile—and would let me perch on his fingers or go through some antic or other, such as carrying me around the room on the top of his head, or holding me in his hand and swinging me to and fro as if I were in a nest on a bough swinging hard in a storm. Those were great times.

But sometimes that bothering old pen annoyed me, and I would seize it in my bill as Fessor made it scratch on the paper. As I held on he went on writing, and that used to jerk my head up and down, and, of course, it dragged me right across the paper. But I didn’t intend to let go; I wanted him to stop and talk to me, so back and forth we’d go, he trying to write with me holding onto the pen, and I determined not to let go, my head bobbing up and down to the movements of his writing and my feet slipping over the paper and smearing the ink, until I got too tired to hold on and had to let go.

Now and again he was determined not to let me touch that pen, and then we had a time. He made a barricade of his left hand to protect his writing hand, and tried to keep me away like that, but I showed him how spunky a baby sparrow could be. I pecked at the pen through his fingers, and watched for the least opening, and the moment he gave me a chance, I darted in and seized the pen. Then he tried to shake me off, generally laughing at me, and calling me a queer little birdie all the time, and he even lifted me up while I held on to the pen with my beak, and in that way tried to discourage me from fighting it. But I don’t think he ever knew how I disliked that wretched little stick. Why should it be in Fessor’s hands all the time? I wanted him to take me in his hands and go out for a walk with me, and I didn’t like his spending so much time pushing that pen back and forth.

One day, after we had had a pretty hard fight with the pen, I made a very strange discovery. When Fessor had gone away I saw that the writing on some of the sheets of paper was about me, and I’m going to let you read it. Here is what he wrote:

“Just now I put her on the sash that she might enjoy the sunshine, but the moment I began to write she flew down upon my desk and seized the pen with eager fury. To protect my pen as I write I have barricaded my writing hand with my left hand and the little creature is making desperate and frantic efforts to get inside. Every crevice she attacks, and tries to worm her way in, struggling with invincible determination and occasionally pecking at me, and seizing the end of my finger in her bill and pulling and tugging at it ferociously. Just before I reached this last word she learned how she might outwit me. She sprang upon my writing wrist over the barricade, seized the pen, and held on. Again I put her out. Again she sprang over. This time when I evicted her, she sought to crawl in under my left hand, and now stands, with crest upraised in anger, by my right hand, apparently thinking over a new plan of campaign.

“A pencil attracts her somewhat in the same way, but after a few onslaughts upon the moving pencil she gives it up; but now the battle on the pen has lasted for quite a number of minutes, and though defeated at every turn, she comes back again and again.”

One day I got very cross with Fessor for writing so much, and I determined to hide from him. By this time I knew the “den” pretty well, and I had found, “way back” in the big box in the corner, where the piles of big envelopes and loose papers were, the cutest hiding-place in the world. It was a kind of tiny house formed by the piles of papers and I could just crawl into it through a narrow place, and then I had room to move around easily, and I knew no one could find me. So I slipped off from the desk on this particular day and dodged into the box and hid myself. Fessor didn’t see where I went, and pretty soon he began to wonder where I was, for he looked all around and went and peeked behind the desk and on the book stand and other places where I often “played hide,” but of course he couldn’t find me. I stood as still all the time as a bird knows how, and never let on that I knew he was seeking for me; and so, after a while, he gave up the search.

“The cutest hiding-place in the world.”

And I didn’t let him know where I had my hiding-place. He thought it was in that box, but he never did know. So it was great fun once in a while to slip away and hide, and then when I was hungry suddenly pop out (without his seeing me), run to his feet, chirp and call, and say: “Here’s Scraggles, as hungry as a hunter.” Then he would reach his hand down, lift me up to the desk, and pretend to scold me: “Where have you been, you naughty little bird? I’ve been hunting everywhere for you, and couldn’t find you!” But I wouldn’t let on. I’d just peek at him, first out of one eye and then out of the other, as much as to ask: “Don’t you wish you knew?”

“At first I thought it was another little bird.”

Chapter VI
Preening my Feathers

I don’t know what it was that made Fessor laugh so when I tried to “spruce up” and make myself look as pretty as possible. Of course, I know full well that I was not a pretty bird. Perhaps I ought to tell you just exactly how I did look. Now you needn’t laugh and think I don’t know, for I do. I’ve seen myself in the mirror lots of times. Fessor and Edith used to take me and stand me before the glass, and while at first I thought it was another little bird, and I tried to talk to and play with it, I soon learned it was only a picture of myself. So, as I looked at myself quite often, I’ll tell you just how I did appear when I was three months old. My baby bill was gone and I looked more like a full-grown bird, but my feathers were still as scraggedy and raggedy as ever. My body and tail were a mousey-brown, with the wing feathers white and tipped with brown. My neck and breast