United States or Mali ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She hed on a dress thet made me think of a red-bird, an' her checks minded me right shrewdly of ivy blooms." "Does ye aim ter name hit ter her thet she puts ye in mind of them things?" "I kinderly hed hit in head ter tell her." Suddenly Maggard's frank laugh broke out disconcertingly as he added an inquiry so direct that it caused the other to flush.
Don knew it was not a quail, so he did not stop to see what it was. He threw back the slide, thrust his hand into the opening and when he clutched the bird received a severe bite from it. "I have half a mind to wring your little neck for you," thought Don, as he brought the fluttering captive, a beautiful red-bird, into view.
But this evening they made no ado about their home-coming. To-day perhaps none had ventured forth. I am most uneasy when the red-bird is forced by hunger to leave the covert of his cedars, since he, on the naked or white landscapes of winter, offers the most far-shining and beautiful mark for Death.
"Say, look at the Red-bird," he shouted, as a Tanager flitted onto a low branch and blazed in the sun. "Bet I hit him first shot!" and he drew an arrow. "Here you, Saphead," said Sam, "quit that shooting at little birds. It's bad medicine. It's against the rules; it brings bad luck it brings awful bad luck. I tell you there ain't no worse luck than Da's raw-hide that I know."
All the birds on this morning seemed to have come out to help her in her celebration. A red-bird, perched on the tip-top twig of the venerable oak which stood near the church, bathing his crimson feathers in the morning sun, warbled his sweetest notes to his mate in a hawthorn thicket across the field.
"I'm going to see if I can't borrow a couple of red-bird costumes off Mrs. Ryan," said Birdie, whose good humor seemed completely restored. "We'll buy a couple of masks. I don't know what Monte's letting us in for, but I'll try anything once." "Will there be dancing, Birdie?" asked Nance, her eyes shining in the dark. "Of course, Silly! Nothing but.
But her eyes held mine with the determination to wrest from them the last truth they might contain, and her voice trembled with doubt: "Would you put the red-bird in a cage for me? Would you be willing to do that for me, Adam?" At those whimsical, cruel words I shall never be able to reveal all that I felt the surprise, the sorrow, the pain. Scenes of boyhood flashed through my memory.
How we should miss him if he were gone, or even were become as rare as the summer red-bird and the cardinal are in our latitude! As it is, he lights up our Northern woods with a truly tropical splendor, the like of which no other of our birds can furnish.
She made friends with a red-bird that sang in its cage in the dining-hall, and with an old woman, yellow, and wrinkled, and sunken-eyed, sitting on a bundle tied up in a quilt beside the door, and smoking her clay pipe, as placidly as if on her own cabin threshold. "'Pears like you ain't much afeard of strangers, honey," said the old woman, taking her pipe out of her mouth, to fill it.
The red-bird comes too, if only to see what a friendly covert its branches form; and the wood-thrush now and then comes out of the grove near by, and nests alongside of its cousin, the robin. The smaller hawks know that this is a most likely spot for their prey; and in spring the shy northern warblers may be studied as they pause to feed on the fine insects amid its branches.
Word Of The Day