June 15, 19–.
We were finishing luncheon on the veranda with all out of doors to give us appetite. It was Buttercup Sunday, a yellow June one that had been preceded by Pussy Willow Sunday, Dandelion Sunday, Apple Blossom, Wild Iris, and Lilac Sunday, to be followed by Daisy and Black-Eyed Susan and White Clematis and Goldenrod and Wild Aster and Autumn Leaf Sundays.
Francie was walking over the green-sward with a bowl and spoon, just as our Scottish men friends used to do with oat-meal at breakfast time. The Sally-baby was blowing bubbles in her milk, and Himself and I were discussing a book lately received from London.
Suddenly I saw Billy, who had wandered from the table, sitting on the steps bending over a tiny bird’s egg in his open hand. I knew that he must have taken it from some low-hung nest, but taken it in innocence, for he looked at it with solicitude as an object of tender and fragile beauty. He had never given a thought to the mother’s days of patient brooding, nor that he was robbing the summer world of one bird’s flight and one bird’s song.
“Did you hear the whippoorwills singing last night, Daddy?” I asked.
“I did, indeed, and long before sunrise this morning. There must be a new family in our orchard, I think; but then we have coaxed hundreds of birds our way this spring by our little houses, our crumbs, and our drinking dishes.”
“Yes, we have never had so many since we came here to live. Look at that little brown bird flying about in the tall apple-tree, Francie; she seems to be in trouble.”
“P’r’haps it’s Mrs. Smiff’s wenomous cat,” exclaimed Francie, running to look for a particularly voracious animal that lived across the fields, but had been known to enter our bird-Eden.
“Hear this, Daddy; isn’t it pretty?” I said, taking up the “Life of Dorothy Grey.”
Billy pricked up his ears, for he can never see a book opened without running to join the circle, so eager he is not to lose a precious word.