"On the contrary," he said, "it's exactly what it used to be. And that's the—ahem—of it! Pardon me, ladies."
"When do you start?" he was asked.
"Not for a week," he answered pompously. "I have several little odds and ends to look into first—" And right in the midst of his speech the call of the South hit him in the middle, you may say. It always does hit a bird like that, and it is contagious like girls fainting in a factory.
The cynical bachelor flew suddenly to the tipmost top of a tree, and poured forth the whole of his heart and soul in a song of the South. "I've got to go—I've got to go," he sang:
"For it's there that I must be,
Where the flower of the pomegranate blazes
In the top of the pomegranate tree.
"And as for the dangers of travel,
I'd laugh—if I hadn't to sing.
For a gale is a silly old zephyr
And a bird is a wonderful thing,
A wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful thing."
Two more verses he sang at the top of his lungs, broke off short with a shrill cry of joy, and took wing.
Then the south-sickness spread, and even the young birds flew to the tops of trees, and defied gales, snakes, the Statue of Liberty, the boy with the gun, and the female (you wouldn't call her a woman) with the untrimmed hat. And away they flew, in ones and twos, until there were only a few left. One of these hopped on the window-sill in full view, and told the Poor Boy to get up.
"Don't be setting such an example of sloth," she said, and squeaked at her own temerity and flew away.
The Poor Boy leaped from bed, and flung his pajamas afar, and rushed for cold water.
The shower fell heavily with wondrous iciness, and the Poor Boy sang aloud and praised God, who had once more returned him the gift of seeing and hearing. At breakfast he told Martha, and with the utmost gravity repeated to her everything that the birds had said—for him.