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If you find it, you must not disturb it, you know, or take the eggs or the young, or frighten the father- or mother-bird; for the people who offered all that money did not want dead birds to stuff for a museum, but hoped that someone might tell them where there were live wild ones nesting. You see the news had got about that the dove that is called Passenger Pigeon was lost.
The bluejay's not a whit the worse for it, remember; in fact, he's all the better off, for his stomach is full and his mischief satisfied, and that's all that ever worries a bluejay. And there isn't any redress for the mother-bird. The thing's done, and can't be undone. But between them they've shown John Flint something that forces a man to take sides.
She had been taken by playmate boys in her infancy to peep into hedge-leaves, where the mother-bird brooded on the nest; and the eyes of the bird in that marvellous dark thickset home, had sent her away with worlds of fancy. Mr. Whitford's gaze revived her susceptibility, but not the old happy wondering.
As soon as the first brood had flown, and while they were yet under their parents' care, they began another nest in one of the other boxes, the female, as usual, doing all the work, and the male all the complimenting. A source of occasional great distress to the mother-bird was a white cat that sometimes followed me about.
The mother-bird said: "They are beautiful, and what God intended for us: therefore they must be true. We may not see the use of them yet, but no doubt some day they will come true." The little Jackdaw said: "Their corners scratch me when I want to go to sleep; they are far worse than crumbs in the bed. All the other birds do without them why should not we?"
I could not leave him to the fate which threatened him, so, running to his assistance, I dragged him down behind some fern trees, where we hid out of sight of the mother-bird, who seemed bewildered by the unaccustomed sound of firearms, and perplexed at the death of her chick, for which she could not account.
She prayed inwardly that she might meet the ordeal before her with Christian strength and courage. The door opened. She saw two figures in the pretty, bright-colored room, William sat astride upon a chair in front of Kitty, who, like some small mother-bird, hovered above him, holding what seemed to be a tiny strip of bread-and-butter, which she was dropping with dainty deliberation into his mouth.
It was a pretty sight to see the mother-bird making the rounds of the barn, running along the timbers, jumping up here and there, and seizing some invisible object, showing the while her white petticoats as a French girl called that display of white tail-feathers. Day after day and week after week as I look through the big, open barn door I see a marsh hawk beating about low over the fields.
Through two windows you look forth into the blue belt of Harpswell Bay, bordered on the farther edge by Harpswell Neck, dotted here and there with houses, among which rises the little white meeting-house, like a mother-bird among a flock of chickens.
They never came to meals; their assiduous guardian, or whatever he was, feeding them on deck with the care of a mother-bird for its fledglings, so that nobody except the two German ladies in their cabin had seen them without the caps.
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