nd great fat white clouds were sailing across
the sky. He knew that he ought to be out, but still he sat on, pen in
hand, trying to write.

Suddenly, among all the other sounds of busy urgent life that were
filling the warm sweet air, he heard the new and unaccustomed song of a
bird. At least not new and not unaccustomed, but new and unaccustomed
there, in this sylvan retreat. The notes poured out, now shrill, now
mellow, now bubbling like musical water, but always rich with the joy of
life, the fulness of happiness. Where had he heard it before? What bird
could it be?

Suddenly the poet's housekeeper hurried in. "Oh, Sir," she exclaimed,
"isn't it a pity? Someone's canary has got free, and it's singing out
here something beautiful."

"Of course," said the poet--"a canary;" and he hastened out to see it.
But before he could get there the bird had flown to a clump of elms a
little way off, from which proceeded sweeter and more tumultuously
exultant song than they had ever known.

The poet walked to the elms with his field-glasses, and after a while he
discerned among the million leaves, the little yellow bird, with its
throat trembling with rapture.

But the poet and his housekeeper were not the only creatures who had
heard the strange melody.

"I say," said one sparrow to another, "did you hear that?"

"What?" inquired the other sparrow, who was busy collecting food for a
very greedy family.

"Why, listen," said the first sparrow.

"Bless my soul," said the second. "I never heard that before."

"That's a strange bird," said the first sparrow; "I've seen it. It's all
yellow."

"All yellow?" said the other. "What awful cheek!"

"Yes, isn't it?" replied the first sparrow. "Can you understand what it
says?"

"Not a note," said the second. "Another of those foreigners, I suppose.
We shan't have a tree to call our own soon."

"That's so," said the first. "There's no end to them. Nightingales are
bad enough, grumbling all night, and swallows, although there's not so
many of them this year as usual; but when it comes to yellow
birds--well."

"Hullo," said a passing tit, "what's the trouble now?"

"Listen," said the sparrows.

The tit was all attention for a minute while the gay triumphant song
went on.

"Well," he said, "that's a rum go. That's new, that is. Novel, I call
it. What is it?"

"It's a yellow foreigner," said the sparrows.

"What's to be done with it?" the tit asked.

"There's only one