birds-nested

Updated: May 3, 2025

Then I remembered how we'd birds-nested together, and nutted, and come home on the hay-carts, and how we'd been in every kind of fun and danger together; and how, when my new Portsmouth lawn took fire, at Martha Smith's apple-paring, he caught me right in his arms and squeezed out the fire with his own hands; and how, when he saw once I had a notion of going with Elder Hooper's son James, he stepped aside till I saw what a nincom Jim Hooper was, and then he appeared as if nothing had happened, and was just as good as ever; and how, when the ice broke on Deacon Smith's pond, and I fell in, and the other boys were all afraid, Steve came and saved my life again at risk of his own; and how he always seemed to think the earth wasn't good enough for me to walk on; and how I'd wished, time and again, I might have some way to pay him back; and here it was, and I'd failed him.

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861