And what does the old man want of the meadow-lark caroling at the base of bunch-grass somewhere ahead of him? Why, he just wants his nest, that is all! Suddenly up pops the bird, right out of the waving mound he was "sure to be in," and he flies low to the nearest stone heap, looking the old man right in the eyes as if he had as easy a conscience as ever reposed in the breast of man or bird. And no other conscience has the meadow-lark, to be sure. It is the same conscience that has descended to him through his ancient family down through countless generations.
But the old man isn't after the conscience of the dear bird. He is after what may develop at the base of that grassy mound. Over toward it he goes, feeling with his cane, poking the buttercups and smartweed and yarrow aside. "Ha," he laughs, "I've got it, Mary!"
"Mary" isn't anywhere in sight; but the old man's habit of telling "Mary" everything stands by him like any good friend. He has been telling her everything all his life, and why shouldn't he tell her about this lark's nest, the very latest discovery of his?
No deceiving this old boy! All these meadow-grasses, bent low and forming a rather awkward archway over a possible corridor, hold secrets. Out darts the mother lark with many a sign of maternal anxiety. And the singer discontinues his morning carol.
The old man kneels very stiffly down in the meadow (he thinks he is dropping down with a jerk, in boy fashion) and parts the grasses. He peers in and sees something. He laughs, parting his gums wide, exhibiting to a black and yellow bumblebee a solitary tooth, like the last remaining picket on the garden gate he swung on when he was a boy. Then he rises stiffly, and goes as fast as his legs can carry him, exactly as he has always done for seventy-five years, more or less, straight to "tell Mary."
Just as he reaches the doorstep and places his strong cane against the corner, preparatory to lifting his right foot, he turns to take a look at the spot he has just left, empty-handed, in the meadow. He shades his eye from the nine-o'clock sun, and sees a crouching form no bigger than was his own at the age of ten. He tries to shout, but that one tooth standing in the door of his lips like a faithful sentinel, or something back of and behind it in the years that are gone, prevents his voice from reaching farther than the stone wall at the garden's edge. "Mary," inside, darning hand-knit stockings, hears the voice that is dear to her, lo! these many years; and she does the shouting. Somehow her voice is the stronger of the two. "Get out of that meadow, boy! No stealing lark's eggs in here."
The "boy" slinks back down to the road fence, and bethinks him of another meadow "out of sight of folks," where no end of larks are singing.
When the nesting-season is over—and maybe there were a couple of broods—the larks will club together on a picnic excursion and wander off and on, nobody knows just where. Perchance they will turn up in the next town or the next county or the next state. As they wander, they will sing plaintively, stopping for meals where meals are served. Or they will chatter all together, recognized wherever their happy lot is cast, loved by the loving, perhaps eaten by the sensual.
It will be remembered that the lark was a wedding guest of no ordinary office at the marriage of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren. At the very last feature of the beautiful ceremony the ballad runs this wise:
"Then on her finger fair Cock Robin put the ring,
While the lark aloud did sing:
'Happy be the bridegroom,
And happy be the bride;
And may not man nor bird nor beast
This happy pair divide.'"