“Be he great or be he small,”
has the pleasure of raking over the smoking seaweed, to bring to light the steaming clams and oysters, and filling the great earthen pudding-dishes with them, ready for the eating.
How the Haven children looked to see the Harwood boys, yes, and girls too, eating clams as if “fingers had, indeed, been made before forks!” Aunt Gertrude read their look of astonishment, and explained to them that picking out clams with the fingers at a clam-bake was quite allowable, and that she herself always did it; and so the children quickly followed her example. It really was great fun for the boys with appetites sharpened by hard work, to run races eating clams,—striving to see who could soonest get a pile of shells he could not look over. This sounds to city ears, unused to clam-bake tastes, very, very strange, almost very improper; but we can only plead—
“’Tis a way we have in Rhode Island, boys!
To drive dull care away.”
The children’s attention was presently diverted from their Bake by the sight of a large bird hovering over them, holding something in her beak.
Their eyes followed the bird as she made great circles in the air,—descending lower and lower, till just as she was within shot, something dropped heavily upon the table, which proved to be a poor bleeding fish. Mrs. Harwood said—
“This bird is a Fish Hawk, and has its nest in one of our old pear trees, which you will presently see. It hovers over the water to watch for fish, coming to the surface to get their dinner of insects, and then pounces down upon them. You see, to-day she has caught a poor little bass, and, as she was carrying it through the air to her nest, the little fish’s tender flesh has been torn away, and he has dropped from his enemy’s beak upon the table before us. The Fish Hawk nest was built here before my husband’s birth, and is more than fifty years old. It is about as large in size as a half barrel, but none of us have ever seen the inside, for, generally, it has a very bad odor of stale fish. The Hawk has a great time every spring, house-cleaning, and putting down their fresh carpets of twigs and pebbles.”
“Why don’t you climb up, Jem, and see the inside of the nest for yourself?” asked Artie.
“For three good reasons, sir: First and foremost, Papa would not allow it; second, the tree would not, for it is quite dead, and unsafe for climbing; and, lastly, because I am so fortunate as to have a nose.”