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It was fed by hidden springs, and fringed about with reeds and cat-tails, stunted willows and shivering birch. From its surface jutted points of the same rock that had made farming unremunerative, and to these miniature promontories and islands Ainsley, in keeping with a fancied resemblance, gave such names as the Needles, St. Helena, the Isle of Pines.
And a kingfisher startled him with its harsh, discordant, rattle as it passed in rapid flight toward the upper end of the pond where the tall cat-tails were nodding in the sunlight and the drooping willows fringed the bank with green. The shadows of the giant elms near the dam grew longer and longer. A workman left the mill and started across the pasture toward his home.
Look at that meadow." Mrs. Emerson waved her hand at the field across the road. On it sedges were waving, softly brown; tufts of mouse-gray goldenrod nodded before the breeze; chestnut-hued cat-tails stood guard in thick ranks, and a delicate Indian Summer haze blended all into a harmony of warm, dull shades.
And the scene before her was worthy of a master hand, which, of course, Mildred Brown was not as yet. From her position in the shade of the willow, she looked out over the flat marshlands toward the west. Nearby, at the edge of the firmer pasture lands, the rushes grew luxuriously, now crowned with large, glossy-brown "cat-tails."
Before them, in the distance, was a little house with a steep roof and a pointed chimney. As they drew closer, they saw two windows in the end, set close together like a pair of eyes. Andy and Hortense walked slowly towards it, hand in hand. It was in a little garden surrounded by a hedge of cat-tails and hollyhocks.
As the sun sinks low in the western sky, and the shadows longer grow, And the night hawk wheels in his silent flight, and the crickets draw their bow, And the cat-tails wave in the gentle breeze, and the boat glides on apace; Then I reel in the line, while the bamboo rod is laid away in its case.
With this conviction strongly renewed, he descended to the deck, to share in the breakfast Bob had set about preparing, the moment he quitted his cat-tails; for Bob insisted on sleeping in the forecastle, though Mark had pressed him to take one of the cabin state-rooms.
In the very middle of the cavern was a little lake, shaped in the same proportion as the floor. It was surrounded by green grass, and at one corner was a profusion of water-lilies and cat-tails. There were no trees, but flowers were everywhere. A few small bushes. Here and there were great clumps of vines. Odin guessed them to be wild cucumber and trumpet vines, for they had grown riotously.
More articulate noises strike your ear the sharp-clucking lectures on propriety of the mud-hen to its young; the brek-kek-kek, coaz-coaz of the frog; the splash of a tumbling turtle; the rushing of a flock of startled ducks rising on swift wings; the sprightly contagious laughter of those little elves the marsh-wrens, teetering on the elastic leaves of the cat-tails.
The mantelpiece was of white marble with gray spots; on one side of it stood an Alaskan "grass basket" full of photographs, and on the other an inverted section of a sewer-pipe painted with daisies and full of gilded cat-tails tied with a blue ribbon. Near the piano straddled a huge easel of imitation brass up-holding the crayon picture of Ida's baby sister enlarged from a photograph.
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