Dorothy went over to look at the drawing that Helen held up to her and decided straightway that it was worth trying. They all went toward the upper side of the garden where young peach trees were planted on the northern slope of the ridge and chose a spot which gave a charming picture of the adjoining field with its brook and the woods beyond.
“The birds are coming along pretty well now,” announced James who had been lying on his back gazing up into the branches swaying in the upper breeze.
“Are you going to build any bird houses, Dorothy?” asked Ethel Brown.
“I suppose we’ll have to if we want them to stay late in the season or all winter,” replied her cousin. “But bird houses are so ugly.”
“Not the modern ones,” interposed James eagerly. “You make them out of pieces of the trunks of trees with the bark on, and you fix up a platform with a stick on it that has spikes to hang suet on and they aren’t a bit conspicuous and lots of birds will stay all winter that otherwise would go south before the regular Palm Beach rush.”
“We must have some then,” Dorothy made up her mind. “Say ‘Robert of Lincoln’?” she begged Ethel Brown, who was the Club’s reciter, “and then we’ll go home and have some cocoa and cookies.”
“Do, Ethel Brown;” “Come on,” were the cries from all the U. S. C. members as they settled themselves to listen to Bryant’s charming verses.
Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain side and mead,