Why, who can keep out Grip and me!' he cried, thrusting in his head,
and staring round the room. 'Are you there, mother? How long you keep us
from the fire and light.'

She stammered some excuse and tendered him her hand. But Barnaby sprung
lightly in without assistance, and putting his arms about her neck,
kissed her a hundred times.

'We have been afield, mother--leaping ditches, scrambling through
hedges, running down steep banks, up and away, and hurrying on. The wind
has been blowing, and the rushes and young plants bowing and bending to
it, lest it should do them harm, the cowards--and Grip--ha ha ha!--brave
Grip, who cares for nothing, and when the wind rolls him over in the
dust, turns manfully to bite it--Grip, bold Grip, has quarrelled with
every little bowing twig--thinking, he told me, that it mocked him--and
has worried it like a bulldog. Ha ha ha!'

The raven, in his little basket at his master's back, hearing this
frequent mention of his name in a tone of exultation, expressed his
sympathy by crowing like a cock, and afterwards running over his various
phrases of speech with such rapidity, and in so many varieties of
hoarseness, that they sounded like the murmurs of a crowd of people.

'He takes such care of me besides!' said Barnaby. 'Such care, mother! He
watches all the time I sleep, and when I shut my eyes and make-believe
to slumber, he practises new learning softly; but he keeps his eye on
me the while, and if he sees me laugh, though never so little, stops
directly. He won't surprise me till he's perfect.'

The raven crowed again in a rapturous manner which plainly said, 'Those
are certainly some of my characteristics, and I glory in them.' In the
meantime, Barnaby closed the window and secured it, and coming to the
fireplace, prepared to sit down with his face to the closet. But
his mother prevented this, by hastily taking that side herself, and
motioning him towards the other.

'How pale you are to-night!' said Barnaby, leaning on his stick. 'We
have been cruel, Grip, and made her anxious!'

Anxious in good truth, and sick at heart! The listener held the door
of his hiding-place open with his hand, and closely watched her son.
Grip--alive to everything his master was unconscious of--had his head
out of the basket, and in return was watching him intently with his
glistening eye.

'He flaps his wings,' said Barnaby, turning almost quickly enough to
catch the retreating form and closing doo