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The thrush episode was only a portent, and not the first. He had no trouble with the other feathered people he tolerated on his beat. Blackie went straight to the lawn. Thrushes bang their worms about to make them see sense and give in; they do it many times. Blackie banged his giant only a little once or twice, and then not savagely, like a thrush.
Every singing bird was in full voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is forgotten in the supreme instinctive joy of the ever-new miracle of procreation. When he came to The Bow he went directly to the paddock gate.
A warm breath of nature starts from the spicy islands south of the great Gulf, crosses it, then sweeps along Mississippi's mighty valley to the "happy hunting ground," bearing in its soft embrace birds of many wing robin, bluebird, thrush, and sparrow. This breath melts the icy fetters of the streams, and they sing a sweet song of welcome.
He knows all that is going on, because the starlings, who are extremely talkative, come every night to sleep in the copse where he lives, and have a long gossip before they go to sleep; indeed, all the birds go to the copse to chat, the rooks, the wood-pigeons, the pheasant, and the thrush, besides the rabbits and the hares, so that the squirrel, to whom the copse belongs, hears everything."
As he left the room, two rosy-faced boys, ragged and dirty, about eight and nine years old, rushed into it just released from school, and coming eagerly to see their sister, and tell that the Thrush was gone out of harbour; Tom and Charles. Charles had been born since Fanny's going away, but Tom she had often helped to nurse, and now felt a particular pleasure in seeing again.
Green foliage around, green grass beneath, a pleasant sensation not silence, but absence of jarring sound blue sky overhead, streaks and patches of sunshine where the branches admit the rays, wide, cool shadows, and clear, sweet atmosphere. High in a lime tree, hidden from view by the leaves, a chiffchaff sings continually, and from the distance comes the softer note of a thrush.
A little farther on, where a hawthorn whitened the bank with its fragrant wreaths, there was a quick, fluttering rush, a glimpse of a speckle-breasted thrush, and a little examination showed the neat nest, plastered inside smoothly with clay, like a cup, to hold four beautiful blue eggs, finely-spotted at the ends. "Sitting, and nearly hatched," said the lad.
And I imagine that this is the utmost that any one can claim even for man's own boasted powers. Set the man who has been accustomed to make engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make a nest like a blackbird.
He surprised everybody by suddenly charging at the thrush on the lawn near him with a murderous ferocity that took one's breath away. It certainly would have taken away that of the other song-thrush, if our friend had not knocked it out of him by the impact.
Of course I'm my own master in a way, being a partner, but I want to consider him. He was awfully good about my going away. Mother's looking well. She was at our Thanksgiving Service; Beattie and Guy too. I've had just a glimpse of godfather." They talked about family things till Robin came in from his festivity with Mr. Thrush, who was staying at Little Cloisters, but only till the following day.
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