She kissed her hand to the friendly blossoms, and they nodded a pleasant good-by, as she floated slowly down stream. A little farther on, she came to a point of rock that jutted out into the river; on it a single pine stood leaning aslant, throwing a perfect double of itself on the glassy water. Hildegarde rested in the shadow. "To be in a boat and in a tree at the same moment," she thought, "is a thing that does not happen to every one. Rose will not believe me when I tell her; yet here are the branches all around me, perfect, even to the smallest twig. Query, am I a bird or a fish? Here is actually a nest in the crotch of these branches, but I fear I shall find no eggs in it." Turning the point of rock, she found on the other side a fairy cove, with a tiny patch of silver sand, and banks of fern coming to the water's edge on either side. Some of the ferns dipped their fronds in the clear water, while taller ones peeped over their heads, trying to catch a glimpse of their own reflection.
Hildegarde's keen eyes roved among the green masses, seeking the different varieties,—botrychium, lady-fern, delicate hart's-tongue; behind these, great nodding ostrich-ferns, bending their stately plumes over their lowlier sisters; beyond these again a tangle of brake running up into the woods. "Why, it is a fern show!" she thought. "This must be the exhibition room for the whole forest. Visitors will please not touch the specimens!"
She pulled close to the bank. Instantly there was a rustle and a flutter among the ferns; a little brown bird flew out, and perching on the nearest tree, scolded most violently. Very carefully Hildegarde drew the ferns aside, and lo! a wonderful thing,—a round nest, neatly built of moss and tiny twigs; and in it four white eggs spotted with brown.
"It is too good to be true," thought the girl. "I am asleep, and I shall wake in a moment. I haven't done anything to deserve seeing this. Rose is good enough; I wish she were here."
But the little brown bird was by this time in a perfect frenzy of maternal alarm; and very reluctantly, with an apology to the angry matron, Hildegarde let the ferns swing back into place, and pulled the boat away from the bank. On the whole, it seemed the most beautiful thing she had ever seen; but everything was so beautiful!
The girl's heart was very full of joy and thankfulness as she rowed along. Life was so full, so wonderful, with new wonders, new beauties, opening for her every day. "Let all that hath life praise the Lord!" she murmured softly; and the very silence seemed to fill with love and praise. Then her thoughts went back to the time, a little more than a year ago, when she neither knew nor cared about any of these things; when "the country" meant to her a summer watering-place, where one went for two or three months, to wear the prettiest of light dresses, and to ride and drive and walk on the beach. Her one idea of life was the life of cities,—of one city, New York. A country-girl, if she ever thought of such a thing, meant simply an ignorant, coarse, common girl, who had no advantages. No advantages! and she herself, all the time, did not know one tree from another. She had been the cleverest girl in school, and she could not tell a robin's note from a vireo's; as for the wood-thrush, she had never heard of it. A flower to her meant a hot-house rose; a bird was a bird; a butterfly was a butterfly. All other insects, the whole winged host that fills the summer air with life and sound, were included under two heads, "millers" and "bugs."
"No, not quite so bad as that!" she cried aloud, laughing, though her cheeks burned at her own thoughts. "I did know bees and wasps, and I think I knew a dragon-fly when I saw him."
But for the rest, there seemed little to say in her defence. She was just like Peter Bell, she thought; and she repeated Wordsworth's lines,—
"A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."
Here was this little brown bird, for example. Bird and song and eggs, all together could not tell her its name. She drew from her pocket a little brown leather note-book, and wrote in it, "Four white eggs, speckled with brown; brown bird, small, nest of fine twigs, on river-bank;" slipped it in her pocket again, and rowed on, feeling better. After all, it was so very much better to know that one had been a goose, than not to know it! Now that her eyes were once open, was she not learning something new every day, almost every hour?