Having found a choice place in a stunted cypress, the egrets soon set about their nest building, choosing a site about forty feet above the swamp. Very affectionate and loving with each other are the egrets; whenever the male bird leaves the cypress, on his return he makes such a fuss over his mate, greeting her as joyfully and tenderly as though he had been gone a week. In fact, the egrets are gentle, trusting birds, and have few enemies among the wild. The father egret does most of the hard work too, for he gathers all the twigs for the nest, which the mother egret carefully builds. Taking turns, the egrets sit upon the four eggs, and in eighteen days the little, homely, featherless egrets appear, naked except for a few tufts of down. This makes them very tender, and the mother egret covers them over during the intense heat of the day with her soft trailing plumes.
At daybreak the father egret would fly off, returning with a crop or pouch full of tiny fish, and while the mother was away getting her own breakfast the young egrets were fed. Clinging to the edge of the nest, father egret would stretch forth his long, snowy neck over the little ones. And one by one he would produce the fish which he had brought home, only partially swallowed, and which the little egrets would gobble up quickly. It took such a quantity of food to satisfy the baby egrets that the old birds made many, many, trips across the swamp to the water during the day.
Now, although the desolate swamp country appeared deserted enough, excepting for its bird and wild life, back on the edges of the vast wilderness Italian families had located, to begin clearing up the jungles of wild timber, and drain the swamp lands. So this is how it happened that Tony and Papita, his small sister, came to live in the swamps. Not a very pleasant place to live in, but their father and mother were there, so they did not mind; besides, as Tony and his sister were too young to work, they had fine times exploring together. In the swamps they found plenty of wild, new things, wonderful flowers, and long mosses, and queer toadstools. Tony came across an old dugout one day, abandoned by some swamper, and then the children began to go upon voyages of discovery. They paddled up and down the narrow, sluggish streams which wound through the swamp, and each day they would venture a little farther. They were never afraid of the loneliness, or any wild thing they saw. Often a great snake would slide heavily off a log into the water, as they stole by in the old boat. At first Papita would shiver, but Tony always laughed at her fears, and now she had become quite as brave at swamp sights as her brother.
One day Tony almost thought himself lost; they found themselves in such a dense, dark spot. At first there seemed no way of getting through.
"We best turn back now, Tony," suggested Papita; "it's the end, I think."
"No, see, the light comes through, soon—we go on a little further." Tony paddled on manfully, and they leaned low to avoid the long, snake-like vines of bamboo. Sure enough, a few tugs of the paddles brought them right through the dark place, out into such a wonderful new spot, they were glad they had kept on. At first such a noise began around them, as the old boat shot through into the light, that Tony and Papita were almost afraid, until they found out what it all meant. Hawks whistled sharply overhead, and the air was filled with water-fowl, which arose from a little island in the middle of the pond they had entered. Wings flapped, there were harsh croaks on all sides, while the blue herons set up their "Tell you what, tell you what," cry.
The children stared about them in astonishment, and, as they stared, a strange thing happened. Right out of the skies, so it first appeared to Tony, a wonderful, snowy form came flying, trailing behind it, what appeared to the children, a beautiful white robe. Its great snowy wings were wide spread, and it finally settled in a dark cypress, where its wonderful plumes shone out so pure and white that both the children were awed by the strange sight. Now there was one thing only which they knew about, and which they imagined bore a faint resemblance to this white-winged thing: their mother treasured an illuminated card with a pictured angel.
"Say, Tony," almost whispered Papita, "perhaps it is an angel."
"No, no," replied more sensible Tony. "It's a real bird, but a kind of angel bird perhaps."