“No, it isn’t that,” agreed the little old gentleman; “but I firmly believe that, you’d feel better if you’d order another eye.”

“Another eye!” said the Policeman, bitterly.  “Would another eye help me to find him?”

“Oh, I see.”  The Man-Who-Makes-Faces spoke with some concern.  “Then he’s flown?”

Gwendolyn, puzzled, glanced from one to the other.  “Who is ’he’?” she asked.

The Policeman bumped his head against his night-stick.  “The Bird!” he mourned.

At that, Jane hopped up and down in evident delight.

But Gwendolyn fell back, taking up a position beside the little old gentleman.  That Bird again!  And it was evident that the Policeman thought well of him!

Pity swiftly merged into suspicion.

“I s’pose you mean the Bird that tells people things,” she ventured—­to be sure that she was not misjudging him.

He wiped his black eye on a coat-tail.  “Aye,” he answered.  “That’s the one.  And, oh, but he could tell you things!”

Gwendolyn considered the statement.  At last, “He’s a tattletale!” she charged, and felt her cheeks crimson with sudden anger.

He nodded—­so vigorously that some of his tears splashed over the rim of his cap.  “That’s why the Police can’t get along without him,” he declared.  “And, oh, here I’ve gone and lost him!  And They’ll put me off the Force!” (Bump! bump! bump!)

“They?” she questioned.  “Do you mean the soda-water They?”

“And They know so much,” explained the little old gentleman, “because the Bird tells ’em.”

“He tells ’em everything,” grumbled the Officer.  “They send him around the whole country hunting gossip—­when he ought to be working exclusively in the interest of Law and Order.”

Law and Order—­Gwendolyn wondered who these two were.

“He knows everything I do,” asserted the Policeman, “and everything she does—­” Here he jerked his head sidewise at Jane.

She retreated, an expression of guilt on that front face.

“And everything you do,” he went on, indicating Gwendolyn.

“I know that,” she said in an injured tone.  “He told Jane I was here.”

At that, the Policeman gave himself a quick half-turn.  “You’ve seen him?” he demanded of the nurse.

She shifted from side to side nervously.  “It ain’t the same one,” she protested.  “It—­”

He interrupted.  “You couldn’t be mistaken,” he declared.  “Did he have a bumpy forehead? and a lumpy tail?”

“You don’t mean a lump of salt,” said Gwendolyn, astonished.

“He does,” said the little old gentleman.  “And the bumpy forehead is from having to remember so many things.”

She heaved a sigh of relief.  “Well, I think I’d like that Bird,” she said.  “And I don’t believe he’s far.  ’Cause when you whistled I heard flying.”

“Running and flying,” corrected the Policeman; “—­running and flying to me.” (He said it proudly.) “The squirrels and the robin-redbreasts, and the sparrows, all follow me here from the Park of a night, knowing I protect ’em.”