ed dead, but he was very much alive, as appeared when he was made
to sit up and turned those wonderful eyes of his upon us. He was a droll
little object at that time, nearly globular in form and covered with
down, like a toy for children to play with. His head turned like a
revolving lighthouse and flared those eyes upon you wherever you went,
great luminous orbs, black-centred and gold-ringed and full of silent
wonder, or, I should rather say, surprise. This never left him. To the
last everything that presented itself to his gaze, though he had seen it
a hundred times, seemed to fill him with fresh surprise. Nothing ever
became familiar. What an enviable cast of mind! It must make the
brightness of childhood perennial.

There was some discussion as to how Tommy should be fed, and we finally
decided that one should try to open the small hooked beak, whose point
could just be detected protruding from a nest of fluff, while another
held a piece of raw meat ready to pop in. It did not look an easy job,
but we had scarcely set about it when Tommy himself solved the
difficulty by plucking the meat out of our fingers and swallowing it.
This early intimation that, however absent he might look, he was "all
there" was never belied, and there was no further difficulty about the
feeding of him. When he saw us coming he always fell into the same
ridiculous attitude, with his face in the dust, but we just picked him
up and stood him on his proper end and showed him the meat and his
bashfulness vanished at once.

After sunset he would get lively and begin calling for his mother in a
strange husky voice. At this time we would let him out in the garden,
watching him closely, for, if he thought he was alone, he would sneak
away slyly, then make a run for liberty, hobbling along at a good rate
with the aid of his wings, though he never attempted to fly as yet. When
detected and overtaken, he fell on his face as before. One memorable day
he found a hole in a stone wall and, before we could stop him, he was
in. The hole was too small to admit a hand, though not a rat or a snake,
so the prospect was gloomy. Suddenly a happy inspiration came to me.
That sad, husky cry with which he expressed his need of a mother was not
difficult to mimic, and he might be cheated into thinking that a lost
brother or sister was looking for him. I retired and made the attempt,
and, hark! a faint echo came from the wall. At each repetition it became
clearer, u