"Yes, Amy," put in Leonard, laughing, "it's a lovely morning for a stroll. The snow is only two feet deep, and drifted in many places higher than your head. The 'beautiful snow' brings us plenty of prose in the form of back-aching work with our shovels."
"No matter," said Webb; "it has also brought us warmth, exquisitely pure air, and a splendid covering for grass and grain that will be apt to last well into the spring. Anything rather than mud and the alternate freezing and thawing that are as provoking as a capricious friend."
"Why, Webb, what a burst of sentiment!" said Burt.
"Doctor, the bluebirds seem to come like the south wind that Leonard says is blowing this morning," Mrs. Clifford remarked. "Where were they last night? and how have they reached us after such a storm?"
"I imagine that those we hear this morning have been with us all winter, or they may have arrived before the storm. I scarcely remember a winter when I have not seen some around, and their instinct guides them where to find shelter. When the weather is very cold they are comparatively silent, but even a January thaw will make them tuneful. They are also migrants, and have been coming northward for a week or two past, and this accounts for the numbers this morning. Poor little things! they must have had a hard time of it last night, wherever they were."
"Oh, I do wish I could make them know how glad I'd be to take them in and keep them warm every cold night!" shy Johnnie whispered to Maggie.
"They have a better mother than even you could be," said the doctor, nodding at the little girl.
"Have all the bluebirds a mother?" she asked, with wondering eyes.
"Indeed they have, and all the other birds also, and this mother takes care of them the year round—Mother Nature, that's her name. Your heart may be big enough, but your house would not begin to hold all the bluebirds, so Mother Nature tells the greater part of them to go where it's warm about the 1st of December, and she finds them winter homes all the way from Virginia to Florida. Then toward spring she whispers when it is safe to come back, and if you want to see how she can take care of those that are here even during such a storm as that of last night, bundle up and come out on the sunny back piazza."
There all the household soon after assembled, the men armed with shovels to aid in the path-making in which Abram was already engaged. Burt was placed in a rocking-chair by a window that he might enjoy the prospect also. A charming winter outlook it was, brilliant with light and gemmed with innumerable crystals. To Amy's delight, she heard for the first time the soft, down-like notes of the bluebird. At first they seemed like mere "wandering voices in the air," sweet, plaintive, and delicate as the wind-swayed anemone. Then came a soft rustle of wings, and a bird darted downward, probably from the eaves, but seemingly it was a bit of the sky that had taken form and substance. He flew past her and dislodged a miniature avalanche from the spray on which he alighted. The little creature sat still a moment, then lifted and stretched one wing by an odd coquettish movement while it uttered its low musical warble.