And the conference was ended. It may not be out of place to relate that Mr. Kookle, the eminent bird author, arrived at Mrs. Mayo's a few minutes later. As he heard that the mysterious stranger was on the front lawn, he approached the house carefully from the rear, and climbed over the back fence. He walked around the piazza to the front door, where Mrs. Mayo awaited him.
Mr. Kookle was dressed in his famous brown suit, worn in order that he might be in perfect harmony with the color of dead grass, and hence, as nearly as possible, unseen on the snowless, winter landscape. He had his field glasses already leveled on the syringa bush when Mrs. Mayo greeted him. She carried an opera glass.
"Right there—do you see, Mr. Kookle?"
"Yes, I see him all right."
They both looked intently at the bird. The weather was a little unfavorable for close observation, for, as it may be remembered, Saturday morning was by turns foggy and rainy. A light mist hung over the wet grass now, but the tropical visitor, or whatever he was, could be descried without much difficulty.
He sat, or stood, either on the lower branches of the bush, or amongst them, on the ground. His feathers were decidedly ruffled, and he turned his back toward his observers. His shoulders were a little drawn up, in the attitude usually ascribed by artists to Napoleon, looking out over the ocean from St. Helena's rocky isle. But it was possible, even at that distance, to see his magnificent crimson crest.
Mr. Kookle took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, "I suspected it."
"What?" inquired Mrs. Mayo, eagerly, "What is it?"
"Madam," returned the bird author, impressively, "you have my sincerest congratulations. I envy you. You have the distinction of having been the first observer, to the best of my knowledge, of the only specimen of the Bulbus Claristicus Giganticus ever known to come north of the fourteenth parallel of latitude."
Mrs. Mayo was moved nearly to tears. Never in all her career as a bird enthusiast, not even when she addressed the Twenty Minute Culture Club on "Sparrows I Have Known"—never had she felt the solemn joy that filled her at this minute.