I held my soft stillness.  Would he stay?  Could it be that the last hop was nearer?  Yes, it was.  The moment was a breathless one.  Dare one believe that the next was nearer still—­and the next—­and the next—­and that the two yards of distance had become scarcely one—­and that within that radius he was soberly hopping round my very feet with his quite unafraid eye full upon me.  This was what was happening.  It may not seem exciting but it was.  That a little wild thing should come to one unasked was of a thrillingness touched with awe.

Without stirring a muscle I began to make low, soft, little sounds to him—­very low and very caressing indeed—­softer than one makes to a baby.  I wanted to weave a spell—­to establish mental communication—­to make Magic.  And as I uttered the tiny sounds he hopped nearer and nearer.

“Oh! to think that you will come as near as that!” I whispered to him.  “You know.  You know that nothing in the world would make me put out my hand or startle you in the least tiniest way.  You know it because you are a real person as well as a lovely—­lovely little bird thing.  You know it because you are a soul.”

Because of this first morning I knew—­years later—­that this was what Mistress Mary thought when she bent down in the Long Walk and “tried to make robin sounds.”

I said it all in a whisper and I think the words must have sounded like robin sounds because he listened with interest and at last—­miracle of miracles as it seemed to me—­he actually fluttered up on to a small shrub not two yards away from my knee and sat there as one who was pleased with the topic of conversation.

I did not move of course, I sat still and waited his pleasure.  Not for mines of rubies would I have lifted a finger.

I think he stayed near me altogether about half an hour.  Then he disappeared.  Where or even exactly when I did not know.  One moment he was hopping among some of the rose bushes and then he was gone.

This, in fact, was his little mysterious way from first to last.  Through all the months of our delicious intimacy he never let me know where he lived.  I knew it was in the rose-garden—­but that was all.  His extraordinary freedom from timorousness was something to think over.  After reflecting upon him a good deal I thought I had reached an explanation.  He had been born in the rose-garden and being of a home-loving nature he had declined to follow the rest of his family when they had made their first flight over the wall into the rose-walk or over the laurel hedge into the pheasant cover behind.  He had stayed in the rose world and then had felt lonely.  Without father or mother or sisters or brothers desolateness of spirit fell upon him.  He saw a creature—­I insist on believing that he thought it another order of robin—­and approached to see what it would say.

Its whole bearing was confidence inspiring.  It made softly alluring—­if unexplainable—­sounds.  He felt its friendliness and affection.  It was curious to look at and far too large for any ordinary nest.  It plainly could not fly.  But there was not a shadow of inimical sentiment in it.  Instinct told him that.  It admired him, it wanted him to remain near, there was a certain comfort in its caressing atmosphere.  He liked it and felt less desolate.  He would return to it again.