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Lucy had a habit of dreaming while on horseback, a habit all the riders had tried to break, but she did not give it rein while she rode Sarchedon, and assuredly now, up on the King, she never forgot him for an instant. He shied at mockingbirds and pack-rats and blowing blossoms and even at butterflies; and he did it, Lucy thought, just because he was full of mischief.
Linda did not seem to notice. She sat quietly looking at the Pacific and thinking her own thoughts. When the fog became damp and chill, she said they must be going, and so they went back to their cars and drove home through the sheer wonder of the moonlight, through the perfume of the orange orchards, hearing the night song of the mockingbirds.
Sometimes several hours pass between the visits of the food-laden parents, but the supply is usually adequate when at length it arrives. Sharing the Labours. Most young birds, however, are fed with great frequency. For more than an hour one day the writer watched a pair of Georgia Mockingbirds feeding their young.
Here we embarked on a comfortable steamer, and sailed nearly twenty-four hours down the incomparable Ocklawaha River, through scenes that are indescribably picturesque; under arches of gigantic trees covered with sombrely beautiful Spanish mosses and trumpet creeper vines, where all day long are heard the ecstatic songs of mockingbirds, and where flutter the plumages of all the colors of the rainbow.
They stood silently together for a moment on the threshold, gazing into the night. Over the glorious land the full moon hung, enamoured. Into the sweet, warm air mockingbirds were pouring low, broken songs of ineffable melody. The white city in the mystical light looked like an enchanted city. It was so still that the very houses looked asleep. "It is a beautiful land," said the doctor.
Even the iron-woods flaunted bloom and the barren, sandy washes turned green with six-weeks grass. It was a time when rabbits gamboled, when mockingbirds sang by moonlight and all the world turned young. Denver chafed at his confinement, one of his Mexicans broke his parole, the hobo miners went swinging past; and just as the last of his courage was waning Bunker Hill came riding down the road.
There were finches of a violet-black, with orange-colored breasts and heads, some blue or golden-throated grossbeaks, and birds adorned with a variety of coloring, which the Mexicans call "primroses," while a number of mockingbirds were warbling airs worthy of the nightingale. The sun, lost amidst the golden clouds, bathed the trees and bushes with a soft light.
But, being made by hand, it took all the next day, too, so that they buried her by moonlight down back of the orchard under the big elm where the children had always had their swing. And they lined and covered her grave with big, fragrant water-lilies. As they lowered the poor little home-made coffin into the grave the mockingbirds began to sing and they sang all that dewy, moonlight night.
I will come in the barge to-morrow evening, and the negroes shall row us up and down the river you and me and Mistress Deborah between the sunset and the moonrise. Then it is lonely and sweet upon the water. The roses can be smelled from the banks, and if you will speak to the mockingbirds we shall have music, dryad Audrey, brown maid of the woods!"
Wild vines that begin among the willows lap over to the orchard rows, take the trellis and roof-tree. There is another town above Las Uvas that merits some attention, a town of arches and airy crofts, full of linnets, blackbirds, fruit birds, small sharp hawks, and mockingbirds that sing by night.
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