“Beware of bobolinks, Milly: they’re worse than jabberwoks;” and she dabbed a little kiss on the end of my nose and was off.
Milly flushed to the roots of her hair, looking at me shyly.
“He and Caro are great friends,” she said; “you know she’d never joke about him if she didn’t like him. She calls him Reedbird, Rice-bird, and Bobolink, and says that so many aliases are sure proof of villainy. Sometimes when she begins to discourse on birds before Uncle Jason she scares me out of my wits. But luckily he doesn’t know one bird from another, except the ones that bother his crops. To think how he has lived in the country, all his life, and never seen anything in earth or sky except crops and money! I do feel sorry for him, Cousin Lil; but I can’t feel as sorry as mother does, because I get so angry with him. He’s—he’s insufferable sometimes.”
“Why don’t you make him behave?” I asked.
Her face paled.
“Make him?” she repeated wonderingly. “How on earth could anybody make Uncle Jason do anything? Caro calls him jay-bird, and that’s just what he is.—Look there!”
The thrushes were actually breaking bread with me this morning; and as Milly spoke a jay dropped from his hiding-place overhead, and managed to light on both of them at once as they pecked peacefully side by side. They dashed madly away and dropped under the beech, panting, their breast-feathers bristling with fear.
Milly was quite white.
“That is what he is like, even when you’re trying so hard to please him,” she said. “I can’t imagine what would happen if you opposed him.” Her underlip quivered a little, and her eyes filled with tears.
“I’ll show you what would happen if that jay will just hang around here till a catbird comes,” I said. “There are plenty of them about, and a catbird stands no nonsense from anybody.”