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Then, suddenly, out burst from the leafed sprays a chorus of song that might have rivaled angels' melodies. The robin's call was a gust of triumph. The oriole's strain lilted exultant and a thousand throats gushed out golden notes.
I did no such thing; I was looking at an oriole's nest that hangs in the elm over the road, but I could not help seeing the lovely pink flower hat that she wore atilt, with just enough pink at the neck and streamers at the waist of her dress to harmonize.
"One, two, three, four tracks," said Mowgli, stooping over the ashes. "Four tracks of men with shod feet. They do not go so quickly as Gonds. Now, what evil had the little woodman done to them? See, they talked together, all five, standing up, before they killed him. Bagheera, let us go back. My stomach is heavy in me, and yet it heaves up and down like an oriole's nest at the end of a branch."
Elnora, born among such scenes, worked eagerly, but to the city man, recently from a hospital, they seemed too good to miss. He frequently stooped to examine a flower face, paused to listen intently to the thrush or lifted his head to see the gold flash which accompanied the oriole's trailing notes. So Elnora uttered the first cry, as she softly lifted branches and peered among the grasses.
Up there the eggs and young are safely rocked by the wind and sheltered by leaves. A cat may look at a king, and also at an Oriole's nest, but the looking will not do her much good in either case. "Mamma Oriole sits on the nest, which is almost closed over her head, and keeps all safe.
"Why, Richard," she would say to me as I rode or walked beside her, or sat at dinner in Prince George Street, "I know every twist and turn of your nature. There is nothing you could do to surprise me. And so, sir, you are very tiresome." "You once found me useful enough to fetch and carry, and amusing when I walked the Oriole's bowsprit," I replied ruefully.
"He always comes back about the middle of May. City folks call May first 'Moving Day, but the fifteenth is the Oriole's Moving Day." So Mother led them out of the front door. "Just sit in that swing or play with the pine needles and watch that elm. Don't make too much noise now! Maybe he'll come today."
In the oriole's moving the clumsy insect fell to the floor, when the jay snatched it; and it was evident that he had got a new idea about its use, for he carried it under a chair and demolished it completely, not even a wing remained. More disturbing to the jay, strange as it may seem, was a tree.
However, on account of the life of blackmail and slavery now led by the members of the old régime, the Oriole's extinction was far less painful to Herbert than his father supposed; and the latter wasted a great deal of severity, insisting that the printing-press should be returned that very night to Uncle Joseph.
The Rabbit tucked in her skirts, and there she was. Could Angelica Maria have seen them now! Some hidden among the low branches of the spruces, where the robins had invited them; some still chatting in the bushes, with the jays; the Spanish Doll swinging in the Oriole's nest, way up in the elm. That was life! But Angelica Maria was calmly eating her breakfast.
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