“Do you remember when we built the nest?” she asked, a little later. “How snug it was and how nice! I shall never have so fine a house again. Just look how ugly and dilapidated it is!”
“The young ones did that,” he replied.
“Yes, but do you remember the morning when they came out of the eggs?” she asked; and her small black eyes beamed. “How sweet they were and how naked and brown! I could not leave them for a minute but they screamed.”
“And then they got their feathers!” he said and strutted. “Grand siskins, all four of them. Do you remember the day they first hopped out of the nest?”
She remembered. She remembered many more things and reminded him of them all. And, when there was nothing left to say, they moved closer to each other and sat silent; and each apart thought of the old days.
And all the others were like the siskins.
The flowers bent towards one another and whispered about the golden time when they stood with a bee in every chalice. So eager were they to tell their stories that none could wait for the other to finish. All over the meadow, it sounded:
“Do you remember...? Do you remember...?”
The flies and the bees sat for half the day and idled and talked intimately and cosily of the beautiful summer days when they hummed and buzzed and reigned in the meadow. The trees waved their branches softly to one another and told long stories of their green youth. The rushes put their brown tips together and dreamt the whole thing over again. The little brown mice sat in the hedge, in the evening sun, and told the children the story of their courtship.
“Do you remember...? Do you remember...?”