not,
but in either event they are, I am inclined to think, happier than are
most people.

Now and again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat
its own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself. On these rare
occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of
fresh air.

I remember well those few pleasant evenings: the river, luminous with the
drowned light, the dark banks where the night lurked, the storm-tossed
sky, jewelled here and there with stars.

It was delightful not to hear for an hour or so the sullen thrashing of
the rain; but to listen to the leaping of the fishes, the soft swirl
raised by some water-rat, swimming stealthily among the rushes, the
restless twitterings of the few still wakeful birds.

An old corncrake lived near to us, and the way he used to disturb all the
other birds, and keep them from going to sleep, was shameful. Amenda,
who was town-bred, mistook him at first for one of those cheap alarm
clocks, and wondered who was winding him up, and why they went on doing
it all night; and, above all, why they didn't oil him.

He would begin his unhallowed performance about dusk, just as every
respectable bird was preparing to settle down for the night. A family of
thrushes had their nest a few yards from his stand, and they used to get
perfectly furious with him.

"There's that fool at it again," the female thrush would say; "why can't
he do it in the daytime if he must do it at all?" (She spoke, of course,
in twitters, but I am confident the above is a correct translation.)

After a while, the young thrushes would wake up and begin chirping, and
then the mother would get madder than ever.

"Can't you say something to him?" she would cry indignantly to her
husband. "How do you think the children can get to sleep, poor things,
with that hideous row going on all night? Might just as well be living
in a saw-mill."

Thus adjured, the male thrush would put his head over the nest, and call
out in a nervous, apologetic manner:--

"I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn't mind being quiet a bit.
My wife says she can't get the children to sleep. It's too bad, you
know, 'pon my word it is."

"Gor on," the corncrake would answer surlily. "You keep your wife
herself quiet; that's enough for you to do." And on he would go again
worse than before.

Then a mother blackbird, from a little further off, would join in the
fray.

"Ah, it's a good