ght. If it pleased
her, she dashed upon it, seized the lower rim with her tiny claws, and
folded her wings. Then drawing her head far back, she thrust her beak,
her head, and sometimes her whole body into the flower tube, her plump
little form completely filling it; and there she hung motionless for a
few seconds, while I struggled with the temptation to inclose blossom
and bird in my hand. If the flower chanced to be an old one, her
roughness sometimes detached it, when she hastily backed out, protesting
indignantly, and looking over to see it fall.

Atom though the hummer was, hardly more than a pinch of feathers, she
was a decided character, with notions and ways of her own. One of her
fancies was to open the honey-pots for herself. When she found a bud
beginning to unclose, a lobe or two unfolded, she at once took it in
hand and vigorously proceeded to aid the process with her needle-like
beak, and the instant it was accomplished rushed in to secure her spoils
in their first freshness. She never appeared to have patience to wait
for anything, and sometimes even tried to hurry up dilatory buds. She
did succeed, as such vehemence must, in breaking in the back way, as it
were, through a hole in the corolla tube, and rifling the bud before it
had a chance to become a blossom. I could not decide positively whether
she pierced the tubes, or availed herself of the labors of an oriole I
had seen splitting them by inserting his beak and then opening it wide
to enlarge the hole.

[Sidenote: _A YOUTHFUL INTRUDER._]

One quality that my little friend most woefully lacked was repose. Not
only were her motions jerky and exasperating in the extreme, but during
my whole acquaintance with her I never saw her for a moment absolutely
still. On the rare occasions when her body was at rest, her head turned
from side to side as though moved by machinery, like the mandarin dolls
of the toy-shops, and I had doubts whether she ever slept. I was really
concerned about her. Nervous prostration seemed the only thing she could
look forward to; and later I found that Bradford Torrey had suffered
similar anxiety about one of her kind, as related in his charming story,
"A Widow and Twins."

There was one exception, as I said, to the complete success of the
little lady in green, in establishing her claim to the vine. The
individual who refused to be convinced interested me greatly. He looked
a guileless and innocent youth; his tender age being