"I never saw my signs more clearly than just now!—there must be something very pure about the atmosphere."
This was too much for my friend, who bent forward eagerly, saying:—"Do let me try if I cannot see them too!"
Well, she "tried" for the greater part of two hours, but absolutely in vain, and then got up, and suggested going home to luncheon. She added naïvely: "I thought they must have something wrong about them, and I am quite sure of it now, or I should have seen them."
But it had taken her two hours of failure to be absolutely convinced that they came straight from the devil!
One sign—also birds—appeared to me on one occasion only. We had returned to Denver, where Miss Greenlow and I were to separate after a year's constant travel together. She was going back to San Francisco to take steamer for the Sandwich Islands, and thence on to Australia; whilst I was returning to England for family reasons.
I had arranged to dine with the hospitable Dean of Denver the evening of the day of her departure, and I had not realised how much less lonely one would have felt had my journey East corresponded more closely with her journey West, especially as she was obliged to leave the hotel about nine o'clock in the morning.
Waking early, and lying in bed, feeling very melancholy at the idea of being left behind and alone in the very centre of America, I looked up, and, to my delight, saw a new sign.
Not my little birds this time, but two big, plump father and mother birds, with a short string attached, not horizontally as before, but perpendicularly. At the end of this little string was a tiny bird, even smaller than the swallows, being evidently guided by the two big birds, and quite safe in their charge.
My room communicated with that of my companion, whose door was open, and I told her of this new "sign in the heavens," adding that I hoped it had come to stay. Fortunately, I found a pencil, and made a rough sketch at the time, or I might have been tempted to imagine that I had never seen it at all, for the trio never appeared again, though I have longed to see them, and have certainly required the consolation quite as much, many times, since that far-away summer morning in Denver, Colorado.
On reaching home after this long American trip, I found a budget of letters awaiting me—amongst them a little registered box containing a kind birthday present from the brother who has been mentioned in the Introduction to this book. Was it another case of mental affinity which had induced him unconsciously to choose a gold brooch with two swallows in gold and pearls? Not an uncommon design; but the birds were exactly the same size as those I was in the habit of seeing just at that time.