"I'm coming back, I tell you; at least,
something is coming back. I don't say whether
it will be the Goat or the Wolf, or what; I'm
pretty sure that--

"'Lawk a mercy on me,
This is none of I!'

"Good-bye, you feathered things! How do
feathers feel? How do you get about? There are
good points about the creature, I can see that;
you can see in the dark--but so could the Wolf!
and it would be nice to be able to ruffle up
your feathers and put a tongue in every wound
of Puggy's--but she is gone, isn't she? Alas!
and if you don't know Shakespeare when I talk
him, why, you are an ignorant set, and don't
deserve your names. This is for the Innocent,
too, mind! Give her my love, and tell
her--never mind; I'll tell her myself.

"So no more at present, Respected Fowls, from
your most obedient, humble servant,

"THE HYBRID."

The three girls were silent for a moment after Gertrude had folded the
letter again. Then, "Do you suppose she will really be changed?" asked
Peggy. "I--I don't think I want Grace to be changed, do you, girls?"

"That depends!" said Bertha, with her chin on her hands, in her
favourite judicial attitude. "Of course it would be despair if we
should lose her real, true self. If she could only stay Grace Wolfe, and
change her point of view, why, then--"

"That is just what she will do, I feel sure of it," said Gertrude,
earnestly. "She has been through an experience--oh, we can't know what
it has been, girls, because we are just plain people, you know, and
Grace is--well, I think she has genius, or something very like it. If
only the power and the sweetness and brightness are turned into helping,
you see, instead of hindering--oh, how much she can do! and I believe
she's going to do it, too. But come, Fluffy, I must go home. Won't you
come, Peggy? We have half an hour before study-time."

Peggy followed only too gladly along the corridor; it was always a treat
to spend half an hour in the Owl's Nest. Gertrude was first; she opened
the door of her room, and paused on the threshold with a low cry. Bertha
and Peggy hurried forward and looked over her shoulder--to see a strange
sight.

Something--or somebody--was sitting on the window-seat. Something gray
and soft. It had a round feathered head, with two feathery horn