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"Oh, I know what she must be," replied Lady Delacour: "a soft, sighing, dying damsel, who puts bullfinches into her bosom. Smile, smile, my dear; you cannot help it; in spite of all your generosity, I know you must think as I do, and wish as I do, that she were at the bottom of the Black Sea this instant."
"For life like two bullfinches," said the actress, who had not forgotten that these birds are noted for the fidelity of their armours. "In China," said Pan-Chao, "it is not the bullfinch but the mandarin duck that symbolizes fidelity in marriage." "Ducks or bullfinches, it is all one," said Caterna philosophically. The ceremony is over. We compliment the newly married pair.
'You may keep school, my lad, dryly commented his mother when she had carefully digested Jerry's plan, 'but you won't find it easy to keep scholars. 'Well, you'll see! was the quietly spoken prediction; for Jerry Blunt had fully determined to be a bird-trainer, and the pupils he was in search of were young bullfinches.
The disordered brain repeating "Bulls! bulls! bulls!" he then drew a bulldog, a pair of bullfinches surrounded by bulrushes, and a hooked bull trout fighting furiously for freedom. That page has been cut out and framed for fifty years.
All around him there sat as many finches and bullfinches and starlings as the bush could well hold who sang songs which he tried to teach himself to play. But the boy was not at home in this art. He blew so false that the feathers raised themselves on the little music-masters and they shrieked and fluttered in their despair.
It recalled the antique legend of the battles of the Pygmies and the Cranes. The poor love-birds lay with their emerald feathers dabbled in their hearts' blood, shoulder to shoulder in death as in life. Canaries gasped at the bottom of their cages, while the water in their little glass fountains ran red. The bullfinches wore an unnatural crimson on their breasts.
The garage door was open. No car. It was obvious that the Bullfinches were still not home. "But I could have sworn I heard somebody inside playing 'The Stars and Stripes Forever." Jerry wondered if he had imagined he had heard the band music. "Nobody's home," said a small voice. And there was Andy just outside the Bullfinch yard. "Don't you suppose I know it?" barked Jerry.
John Burroughs said he thought we had, and one day when he was staying at our place he came across a bird that he had never seen before. About ten years ago we imported a great number of birds from abroad yellow-hammers, chaffinches, green finches, red pales, twites, bullfinches, jays, linnets, larks some five hundred of them. They stayed around a while, but where they are now I do not know.
And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the garden at once? Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and chaffinches, and greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtits. And there are four kinds of tomtits round here, remember: but we may go on with such talk for ever. Wiser men than we have asked the same question: but Lady Why will not answer them yet.
Evelyn stopped speaking, and Louise understood that she shrank from the confession that to retain her sanity she had taught bullfinches to whistle, "So she is sane, saner than any of us, for she has kept herself sane by an effort of her own will," Louise said to herself. "Some birds learn much quicker than others; they vary a great deal." "My dear Evelyn, it is ever so nice of you.
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