g, humming and buzzing, like a little kettle getting ready
to boil.

On sunny days, he amused himself by bumping his head against the window,
and watching what went on outside. It would have given me a headache,
but he seemed to enjoy it immensely. Up in my hanging basket of ivy he
made his bower, and sat there on the moss basking in the sunshine, as
luxuriously as any gentleman in his conservatory. He was interested in
the plants, and examined them daily with great care, walking over the
ivy leaves, grubbing under the moss, and poking his head into the
unfolding hyacinth buds to see how they got on.

The pictures, also, seemed to attract his attention, for he spent much
time skating over the glasses and studying the designs. Sometimes I
would find him staring at my Madonna, as if he said, 'What in the world
are all those topsy-turvy children about?' Then he'd sit in the middle
of a brook, in a water-color sketch by Vautin, as if bathing his feet,
or seem to be eating the cherry which one little duck politely offers
another little duck, in Oscar Pletch's Summer Party. He frequently
kissed my mother's portrait, and sat on my father's bald head, as if
trying to get out some of the wisdom stored up there, like honey in an
ill-thatched bee-hive. My bronze Mercury rather puzzled him, for he
could not understand why the young gentleman didn't fly off when he had
four wings and seemed in such a hurry.

I'm afraid he was a trifle vain, for he sat before the glass a great
deal, and I often saw him cleaning his proboscis, and twiddling his
feelers, and I know he was 'prinking,' as we say. The books pleased him,
too, and he used to run them over, as if trying to choose which he
would read, and never seemed able to decide. He would have nothing to
say to the fat French Dictionary, or my English Plays, but liked Goethe
and Schiller, Emerson and Browning, as well as I did. Carlyle didn't
suit him, and Richter evidently made his head ache. But Jean Ingelow's
Poems delighted him, and so did her 'Stories told to a Child.' 'Fairy
Bells' he often listened to, and was very fond of the pictures in a
photograph book of foreign places and great people.

He frequently promenaded on the piazza of a little Swiss chalet,
standing on the mantel-piece, and thought it a charming residence for a
single gentleman like himself. The closet delighted him extremely, and
he buzzed in the most joyful manner when he got among the
provisions,--for we kept