If Greycliff had been beautiful in autumn, it was doubly so now, as the leaves came out and blossoms decked the outlying meadows. In the wood, the girls found blue, white and yellow violets. From her window Cathalina could see the birds flitting about the branches near by and hear the new and lovely spring songs that came from their happy throats, “Why,” she exclaimed to Hilary one day after a long tramp when they had dropped on the beach to rest with a group of girls. “I always loved to look at the trees and sky and water, but it does make it so much more fascinating if you go after something.”
“Yes,” assented Hilary. “Now, when I see a bird on the shore I wonder if it is a duck or a coot or a gull,”—“Or a chicken!” finished Isabel, who continued with a tale of her own. “The other day I identified the janitor’s old hen as a grouse! O, yes, I can identify any old thing! I put down every line and mark I could see,—in my note book, and never knew any better till it came beating it toward me and clucking! And I watched ten minutes for one of his old barnyard ducks to come around the corner of a rock. What business it had down on the shore posing as a gull or something I could not see.”
“I did worse than that,” said Hilary. “Honestly, girls, I hardly knew a bluejay from a wren until this spring. So the first week of class I was trying to get as big a list as possible,”—here several girls looked interested and nodded their heads as if to say in girls’ parlance, “me, too!”
“And I saw a bird that seemed to be building a nest around by the engine house somewhere. He was an awfully pretty looking little chap, all brown and stripey like the sparrow, and his feathers were so new and bright that I just knew he must be a new arrival, some kind of a finch, by his thick bill. I noted down very carefully all his streaks and bars, just as Isabel did. The only very striking thing about him was a dark patch on his throat, and I found in my book the description of a ‘black-throated bunting.’ That was it, of course,” and Hilary brought her fist down on the heap of sand which she had been scraping up as she talked. “For at least half an hour I was watching, and the longer I looked the less the black-throated bunting idea would do! And what do you suppose he was?”
“An English sparrow,” cried Diane, who had been grinning all through the description. “I did almost the same thing,—the beasts!”
“Yes, I was so mad,” smiled Hilary, “and mortified! But that lively little fellow was so cute and handsome that I’ve had more patience with English Sparrows since, for all my disgust that time. I was only too thankful that I had not handed in my report before I found out what he was!”
As the days went by, the blossoms fell from the pink and white dreams that went by the names of plum, peach, apple or pear trees. The leaves changed from the green mists that shrouded the trees in early May to the waving foliage which hid the nest-building birds. The boathouse was opened, the life-saving watchmen out for the season.
Canoeing and rowing began on river and lake, and picnics or beach parties were common. As Cathalina and Hilary had learned to row the summer before, many a jolly pull they had, together or with other girls, particularly Betty Barnes and Lilian North. Lilian had come to be as “chummy” with Hilary as Betty was with Cathalina, though neither friendship interfered in the least with the strong affection between Cathalina and Hilary.
“Hil and Lil,” chanted Cathalina one afternoon when the four were bobbing on the gentle waves.
“That rhyme may come in handy for your next class song,” suggested Betty.