“Watching them to like them or to catch them?” asked Nat suspiciously, then feeling ashamed the next moment when Rap answered: 

“To like them.  I’d never kill a bird!  I’ve sometimes found dead ones that have hit against the telegraph wires; and it makes you feel lumpy in your throat to see how every little feather lies so soft and lovely, though they never will fly any more.”

By this time the three were seated in front of the strange boy, looking at him with great interest.

“What is the book you were reading when we came up?” asked Olive.  Rap pulled it out and laid it on her lap, saying, “I don’t know its name—­the beginning part that tells is gone—­but it’s all about birds.  Here’s a picture of a Bluebird, only it isn’t quite right, somehow.  Oh, I do wish I had all of the book.”

Olive turned over the leaves that looked familiar to her and saw that it began at page 443.  “Why, it is part of the first volume of Nuttall’s ‘Manual of Birds.’  My father has the whole of this book,” she said.  “Where did you find this bit?”

“The rag pedler that comes by every fall lets me look in his bags, ’cause sometimes there are paper books in them, and he gave me this for nothing, ’cause it was only a piece.”

“Why don’t you ask your father to buy you a whole book, instead of grubbing in rag-bags?” said Nat thoughtlessly.

Rap looked from one to the other, as if in his interest he had forgotten himself for a time, and then he said quietly, “I haven’t any father.”

“I haven’t any mother,” said Olive quickly, putting her hand gently on the thin brown one.  “We must be friends, Rap.”

Her sympathy soothed him immediately, and his gentle nature instantly tried to comfort her by saying, “But you said your father owned the whole of my book.  How glad you must be!”

Then they all laughed, and Nat and Dodo began telling about their uncle’s room and all the books and birds in it, and about the book he had promised to write for them, until Rap looked so bewildered that Olive was obliged to explain things a little more clearly to him.  “Come home with us,” cried Nat and Dodo, each seizing him by a hand, “and perhaps uncle will tell you all the names we must learn—­head, throat, wings, and what all the other parts are rightly called—­and then we can go around together and watch birds.”

But as Rap turned over and scrambled up with the aid of his crutch, they saw that he had only one leg, for the trouser of the left leg was tied together just below the knee.

Acting as if they did not notice this, they led the way to the house, going close to the fence that divided the orchard from the road, because there was a little path worn there.

“What is the whole of your name?” asked Dodo, who could not keep from asking questions.

“Stephen Hawley,” he answered.  “My mother is Ann Hawley, who lives by the mill, and does all the beautiful fine white washing for everybody hereabouts.  Don’t you know her?  I suppose it’s because you have just come.  I believe my mother could wash a cobweb if she tried, and not tear it,” and a glow of pride lit up his face.