ney! Mercy! d'you suppose it played Santa
itself? or did the boys push it down?"

"The boys! Those miserable Henkyl Hunters--always on the trail of a
joke! If they did, they'll never own up! Never!"

Such was the substance of the uproar as the downy ball of mopping
feathers took on a beak, claws and big brown eyes, blank and round,
perching upon the foot-rail of a cot!

"Oh! it's as bad as the bats in Tory Cave. And they were so-o hor-rid!"
wailed Una. "It--it just tickled my lips with its wing. Bah!"

"Bad! It's not bad, at all; it's dear," cooed Jessie, the merle, feeling
instant kinship with the bewildered bird. "Girls! Girls! I believe it's
blind--blind as a bat, or as the pale fish in the cave. There it
goes--look--knocking its head, this way and that, against the wall!"

Yes, the fluttering thing, of a sudden taking to flight again, was now
playing shuttlecock, feathered shuttlecock, to the battledore of a broad
sunbeam which batted it wildly hither and yon.

"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