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But when he held his tiny lantern close, Thumbkins could see that she shivered as the cold raindrops splashed upon her back. So Thumbkins ran to the woods where he knew the mushrooms grew, and breaking off the largest one he could find he carried it to where Mamma Meadow-Lark sat sleeping upon her nest, and planted it so the raindrops rolled off the round roof and did not touch her at all.
And yet I cannot help feeling that neither of the two really hears the catbird say "miaow" or the robin "cheer up," as they pretend to. At the first twitter or chirp from some invisible source Mrs. Harrington stops and with radiant face asks me whether I do not distinctly catch the "pit-pit-pity-me" of the meadow-lark. I say yes; but I really don't, and I don't believe she does.
And lying thus, as the sun sank and the shadows stole slowly across the warm bands of sunlight, and the meadow-lark called good-night from the meadows, whence the cows were coming homeward and the sheep were still browsing out of the quiet and peace and stillness and purity and sweetness of it all came his last vision the vision of a boy with a fresh, open face and no shadow across the mirror of his clear eyes.
The next morning Miss Satterly went very early to the school-house for what purpose she did not say. A meadow-lark on the doorstep greeted her with his short, sweet ripple of sound and then flew to a nearby sage bush and watched her curiously. She looked about her half expectant, half disappointed.
Never before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded and saturated with them and their performances, as this current month. Such oceans, such successions of them. Early came the Blue birds, Meadow-lark, Killdeer, White-bellied swallow, Plover, Sandpiper, Robin, Wilson's thrush, Woodcock, Flicker. May 2l. Back in Camden.
There, while looking upon blue sea and snowy sails and floating gulls, you may yet hear on the landward side the melodious and plaintive drawl of the meadow-lark, most patient of summer visitors, and, indeed, lingering on this island almost the whole year round. But who cares whither a footpath leads? The charm is in the path itself, its promise of something that the high-road cannot yield.
All the beauty of Spring and Summer went to the making of the tapestry: the first robin's cheery call, the shimmer of blue wings speeding across it, the golden glow from an oriole's breast, and the silver rain of melody dripping from the throat of a meadow-lark as he swept through the infinite spaces above.
The song was really exquisite, and as much in harmony with the melody of the stream as the voice of the English sparrow is with the city sounds among which he dwells, and the plaintive refrain of the meadow-lark with the low-lying, silent fields where he spends his days. But little cared baby ouzel for music, however ravishing. What to his mind was far more important was food, in short, worms.
So now he climbed out of the nest and looked about. The ground about the Meadow-Lark's nest was covered with tiny puddles, and Mamma Meadow-Lark was soaking wet. She looked very uncomfortable. Her feathers stuck out in all directions and a drop of water fell from her head and rolled down her beak.
He had never tried to find a name for the side of his life that struck deepest. He knew that the ripple of a meadow-lark swinging on a weed against the sunrise, with diamond-sparkles all on the grass around, gripped him and hurt him vaguely with its very sweetness. He knew that he loved to sit alone and look away to a far skyline and day-dream.
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