My Robin | Page 2

myself knew it. Because of this fact I had the power of holding myself
STILL--quite STILL and filling myself with softly alluring tenderness
of the tenderest when any little wild thing came near me. "What do you
do to make him come to you like that?" some one asked me a month or
so later. "What do you DO?" "I don't know what I do exactly," I said.
"Except that I hold myself very still and feel like a robin."
You can only do that with a tiny wild thing by being so tender of him--
of his little timidities and feelings--so adoringly anxious not to startle
him or suggest by any movement the possibility of your being a
creature who COULD HURT--that your very yearning to understand
his tiny hopes and fears and desires makes you for the time cease to be
quite a mere human thing and gives you another and more exquisite
sense which speaks for you without speech.
As I sat and watched him I held myself softly still and felt just that. I
did not know he was a robin. The truth was that he was too young at

that time to look like one, but I did not know that either. He was plainly
not a thrush, or a linnet or a sparrow or a starling or a blackbird. He
was a little indeterminate-colored bird and he had no red on his breast.
And as I sat and gazed at him he gazed at me as one quite without
prejudice unless it might be with the slightest tinge of favor-- and
hopped--and hopped--and hopped.
That was the thrill and wonder of it. No bird, however evident his
acknowledgement of my harmlessness, had ever hopped and
REMAINED. Many had perched for a moment in the grass or on a
nearby bough, had trilled or chirped or secured a scurrying gold and
green beetle and flown away. But none had stayed to inquire--to
reflect--even to seem--if one dared be so bold as to hope such a
thing--to make mysterious, almost occult advances towards intimacy.
Also I had never before heard of such a thing happening to any one
howsoever bird loving. Birds are creatures who must be wooed and it
must be delicate and careful wooing which allures them into friendship.
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