“Oh, you darling!” cried Connie as she clasped her hands in rapture. “I’ve been trying to find their nest for several days, Andy, but the little dears have hidden it too well.”
She made soft clucking sounds as she moved nearer to the beautiful bird. The goldfinch fluttered close to her side to perch like a yellow flower on the top of a tall thistle, perked its pretty head and looked up at her with bright shining eyes.
“Dear, dear, dearie,” it sang again, then flew with characteristic wavy motion to a clump of willows, twittering sweetly as if calling Connie to follow.
“I ’ave to ’urry ’ome,” said Andy as he looked at his watch. He glanced back at a turn in the trail to see Connie pressing the willows gently aside in her search for the goldfinch’s nest.
“Strike me pink! but she is a wonderful girl,” soliloquized Andy. “The ’andsomest and the brainiest kid I ever saw in me life. If I was thirty years younger, two feet ’igher, and ’arf decent to look at, I’d fall ’ead over ’eels in love with ’er.”
He smiled broadly at these ridiculous reflections, but there was a tender light in his bright blue eyes. A swarthy foreign labourer, moving aimlessly up the trail, merely grunted in reply to Andy’s cheerful salutation.
“One of Gillis’s beloved bohunks,” chuckled Andy.
A moment later he stopped suddenly. Connie was up there alone. For a short interval he hesitated, then resumed his downward journey. “She’d shoot ’is blinkin’ ’ead off if ’e tried to ’arm ’er,” he decided.
Just then he heard Connie’s voice raised in a quick cry of anger. Andy jumped as though subjected to a galvanic shock. He turned in mid-air and before he struck the ground his short legs were going through the motion of running. The picture of Connie struggling in the arms of the burly foreigner made him fairly fly.
“I’m coming, Connie!” he shouted as he tore up the hill.