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My hearing is very acute, and not a word of that Bad Boy’s brutal intentions was lost on me. I shrunk among my feathers and shivered with despair; but when I heard the voice of Little Miss I rounded my ear once more.

“No, Williams, no! He must not be stuffed. Oh, please beg Tom to come to me. Perhaps I can give him something to persuade him not. If he must stuff an owl, please, please let him stuff a strange owl. One I haven’t made friends with. Not this one. He is very wild, but he is very lovely and soft, and I do so want him to be let go.”

“Well, Miss, I’ll send Tom and you can settle it with him. All I say, he’s a Tartar, and stuffing’s too good for him.”

Whether she bribed Tom, or persuaded him, I don’t know, but Little Miss got her way, and that Bad Boy let me go, and I went back to my Ivy Bush.

OWLHOOT I.

“What can’t be cured must be endured.”

—Old Proverb.

It was the wish to see Little Miss once more that led my wings past her nursery window; besides, I had a curiosity to look at the clock.

It is an eight-day clock, in a handsome case, and would, undoubtedly, have been a becoming perch for a bird of my dignified appearance, but I will not describe it to-day. Nor will I speak of my meditations as I sit in my Ivy Bush like any other common owl, and reflect that if I had not had my own way, but had listened to Little Miss, I might have sat on an Eight-day Clock, and been godfather to the children. It is not seemly for an owl to doubt his own wisdom, but as I have taken upon me, for the sake of Little Miss, to be a child’s counsellor, I will just observe, in passing, that though it is very satisfactory at the time to get your own way, you may live to wish that you had taken other folk’s advice instead.

From that nursery I have taken flight to others. I sail by the windows, and throw a searching eye through these bars which are, I believe, placed there to keep top-heavy babies from tumbling out. Sometimes I peer down the chimney. From the nook of a wall or the hollow of a tree, I overlook the children’s gardens and playgrounds. I have an eye to several schools, and I fancy (though I may be wrong) that I should look well seated on the top of an easel–just above the black-board, with a piece of chalk in my feathery foot.

Not that I have any notion of playing schoolmaster, or even of advising schoolmasters and parents how to make their children good and wise. I am the Children’s Owl–their very own–and all my good advice is intended to help them to improve themselves.

It is wonderful how children do sometimes improve! I knew a fine little fellow, much made of by his family and friends, who used to be so peevish about all the little ups and downs of life, and had such a lamentable whine in his voice when he was thwarted in any trifle, that if you had heard without seeing him, you’d have sworn that the most miserable wretch in the world was bewailing the worst of catastrophes with failing breath. And all the while there was not a handsomer, healthier, better fed, better bred, better dressed, and more dearly loved, little boy in all the parish. When you might have thought, by the sound of it, that some starving skeleton of a creature was moaning for a bit of bread, the young gentleman was only sobbing through the soap and lifting his voice above the towels, because Nurse would wash his fair and rosy cheeks. And when cries like those of one vanquished in battle and begging and praying for his life, rang through the hall and up the front stairs, it proved to be nothing worse than Master Jack imploring his friends to “please, please,” and “do, do,” let him stay out to run in a final “go as you please” race with the young Browns (who dine a quarter of an hour later), instead of going in promptly when the gong sounded for luncheon.