“The twilights for relaxation, surely. The twilights—purple and mysterious. See those weird trees that leap like twisting flames into the sky. Look at the river, lovingly clasped in mountain arms. Listen to the bird-twitterings. Mr. Dale, what is the bird that sings far into the night?”
“The bird that says: ‘Sweet, sweet, please hark to me, won’t you?’”
She laughed. “Something equally plaintive, at any rate.”
“It’s the white-crowned sparrow. You’ll hear it through the darkest nights. Its song has all the sombre quality of the dark hours. It’s our American nightingale.”
“Mr. Audubon. You know tomes of bird lore, don’t you? Joey says you are writing a nature story. I didn’t know the sparrows sang like nightingales before.”
I smiled down into the engaging face, and then I threw back my head and whistled. I began with a rich bell-clear note, this merged into a well defined melody, and terminated in a pealing chanson. “The meadow lark,” I said, “which is not a lark at all, but belongs to the oriole family. It is an incessant singer.”
“Joey said you whistled like the birds. Why, you’re a wonder! A craftsman—a fixing man—and—a bird boy.”
“A bird in the heart is worth more than a hundred in the note book,” I quoted.
The evening ended all too soon.
Two days later Joey brought me the information that Haidee was walking about in the Dingle with the aid of a single crutch.