My Robin | Page 2

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 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