“But for me you wouldn’t have been bitten. But don’t let’s talk of it.” She shivered suddenly.
“You are cold,” he said. “Isn’t that gown too thin for this night air?”
“No, I often walk here till quite late. Listen!”
The bird song had broken forth again, to be answered this time by a rival’s in a distant thicket. “My nightingale is in good voice.”
“I never heard a nightingale before I came to Virginia. I wonder why it sings only at night.”
“What an odd idea! Why, it sings in the day-time, too.”
“Really? But I suppose it escapes notice in the general chorus. Is it a large bird?”
“No; smaller than a thrush. Only a little bigger than a robin. Its nest is over there in that hedge—a tiny loose cup of dried oak-leaves, lined with hair, and the eggs are olive color. How pretty the hedge looks now, all tangled with firefly sparks!”
“Doesn’t it! Uncle Jefferson calls them ‘lightning-bugs.’”