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"You once found me useful enough to fetch and carry, and amusing when I walked the Oriole's bowsprit," I replied ruefully. "Why don't you make me jealous?" says she, stamping her foot. "A score of pretty girls are languishing for a glimpse of you, Jennie and Bess Fotheringay, and Betty Tayloe, and Heaven knows how many others. They are actually accusing me of keeping you trailing.
All the beauty of Spring and Summer went to the making of the tapestry: the first robin's cheery call, the shimmer of blue wings speeding across it, the golden glow from an oriole's breast, and the silver rain of melody dripping from the throat of a meadow-lark as he swept through the infinite spaces above.
He understood that he was unfortunately within her power; and he saw that it would be dangerous to place in operation for her exclusion from the Building this new mechanism contrived with such hopeful care, and at a cost of two dollars and twenty-five cents taken from the Oriole's treasury.
The oriole's singing was so inspiring that it tempted the Cardinal to another effort, and perching where he gleamed crimson and black against the April sky, he tested his voice, and when sure of his tones, he entreatingly called: "Come here! Come here!" Just then he saw her!
"The Thrasher's song is like some one talking cheerfully; the Meadowlark's is flute-like; the Oriole's is more like clarion notes; the Bobolink bubbles over like a babbling brook; while the dear little brown striped Song Sparrow, who is with us in hedge and garden all the year, sings pleasant home-like ballads."
He liked the fun the gang could have together in the wilds, but that was all; like last summer when Hen had run into the hornet's nest hanging on a bush and thought it was an oriole's basket! Alone and weighed down with horror as he was, Jack could not stir up any enthusiasm for the sport.
Either the Baltimore oriole has changed its habits of nest-building since Audubon's day, or else he was wrong in his drawing of the nest of that bird, in making the opening on the side near the top. I have never seen an oriole's nest that was not open at the top.
Behind the forest-leaf we suddenly discover a songster, the gleam of an oriole's breast in a bed of mantling green. Nature always rejoices. She has been singing and laughing all down the ages. She does her part grandly for the happiness of man; and as we come into closer touch with her, sentiment arises as naturally in our hearts, as does the water in her bubbling springs.
A little while ago it had spread its fresh and youthful canopy of green overhead in unstinted abundance of vigour. Now it stood desolate, with its leaves drooping in fever-hot inertia. The squirrel sat gloomily silent on the branches, panting under its fur, and the oriole's splendour of orange and jet had turned dusty and bedraggled.
On following up the cry, I always found a young oriole and a hard-worked father feeding him. The voice did not even suggest an oriole to me, until I had been deceived two or three times and understood it. The young ones of the orchard oriole's nest lived up to the traditions of the family by being inveterate cry-babies, and making so much noise they could be heard far around.
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