ept watch on the friend who had never
disappointed her before. Little by little, her slow intelligence began
to realise the discovery of something in his face which made him look
handsomer than ever, and which she had never seen in it yet. They all
left the aviaries, and turned to the railed paddocks in which the larger
birds were assembled. And still Zo followed so quietly, so silently,
that her elder sister--threatened with a rival in good behaviour--looked
at her in undisguised alarm.

Incited by Maria (who felt the necessity of vindicating her character)
Miss Minerva began a dissertation on cranes, suggested by the birds with
the brittle-looking legs hopping up to her in expectation of something
to eat. Ovid was absorbed in attending to his cousin; he had provided
himself with some bread, and was helping Carmina to feed the birds. But
one person noticed Zo, now that her strange lapse into good behaviour
had lost the charm of novelty. Old Teresa watched her. There was
something plainly troubling the child in secret; she had a mind to know
what it might be.

Zo approached Ovid again, determined to understand the change in him if
perseverance could do it. He was talking so confidentially to Carmina,
that he almost whispered in her ear. Zo eyed him, without daring to
touch his coat tails again. Miss Minerva tried hard to go on composedly
with the dissertation on cranes. "Flocks of these birds, Maria, pass
periodically over the southern and central countries of Europe"--Her
breath failed her, as she looked at Ovid: she could say no more.
Zo stopped those maddening confidences; Zo, in desperate want of
information, tugged boldly at Carmina's skirts this time.

The young girl turned round directly. "What is it, dear?"

With big tears of indignation rising in her eyes, Zo pointed to Ovid. "I
say!" she whispered, "is he going to buy the Piping Crow for you?"

To Zo's discomfiture they both smiled. She dried her eyes with her
fists, and waited doggedly for an answer. Carmina set the child's mind
at ease very prettily and kindly; and Ovid added the pacifying influence
of a familiar pat on her cheek. Noticed at last, and satisfied that
the bird was not to be bought for anybody, Zo's sense of injury
was appeased; her jealousy melted away as the next result. After a
pause--produced, as her next words implied, by an effort of memory--she
suddenly took Carmina into her confidence.

"Don't tell!" she began. "I saw another man