(Cousin Molly Belle had the knack of saying just the thing that would please everybody, and saying it in the right way and at the right time.)
"Of course I have not raised them all from the eggs," continued Madam. "We catch new birds every year, and some are never quite tame. So your or-nith-ol-o-gist"—pronouncing it in the same comical way that Cousin Molly Belle had done—"was not altogether in the wrong. But they get used to their new life much sooner because there are so many of their own kind about them. When I find that a couple are thinking of going to house-keeping, I root a branch of poplar, or hickory, or maple, in a tub of moist earth, and curtain off a corner where they will not be disturbed in the nesting-time."
"That was the very thing the celebrated or-nith-ol-o-gist said was absolutely impossible," cried Cousin Molly Belle. "Even though I told him that, if he would pay us a visit, I would show him the cosey corner, and the pretty bride and gallant bridegroom building their nest."
"A great many things happen to each of us that others would not believe, no matter how solemnly we might declare them to be true," said Madam Leigh, very seriously.
I had a notion that she was thinking of other things in her strangely desolated life besides the aviary and the learnèd man who knew all about birds.
"To me, the most singular part of my management of my hummers is that I succeed in making them comfortable and contented in the winter," she said. "For their forefathers and foremothers have been going South at the first sign of frost for six thousand years or so. I have a stove put up in here, covered with wire netting to hinder the little dears from flying against it; then I keep an even temperature and fill the room with flowers. It has, as you see, a southern exposure. I live here with them all day long. When it begins to grow dark, I say, 'Good night' and go across to my chamber. At bedtime I look in to make sure the fire will keep in until morning, and that my darlings are all right. While daylight lasts we are very happy together. I am busy with my pygmies and my flowers. I feed the hummers with sugar-and-water in winter, with a taste of honey on Sundays"—laughing cheerily. "To make them glad that Sunday has come, you know. I've an idea that they need stronger food in cold weather than in summer. It helps tame them to make them eat from the tip of my finger. I take a great deal of pains to keep a succession of plants in flower, for, after all, hive-honey isn't quite as pure and delicate after it has gone through the bee's body as when the hummer sips it fresh from the flower-cup. You must come over next winter, Molly Belle, and bring the little lady to see my nasturtiums, and hyacinths, and morning-glories. Roses and cape-jessamines, and the like are of no use to us. Our flowers must be shaped like wine-glasses, with a drop of honey-dew in the bottom, to please us perfectly. The hummers and I understand that. You wouldn't believe how much company we are for one another, or how much I learn from them. Even my silly mannikins give work to my fingers and keep my thoughts steady."
Cousin Molly Belle put her arms around the wee old lady and hugged her hard—the honeysuckles and catalpas falling to the floor.
"All this is the loveliest thing I ever heard!" laughing to keep from crying. "I hope you will live to be a hundred years old, and give the lie to or-nith-ol-o-gists every day you live. And Molly and I will come to see you, often and often, whenever she is at our house. You dear, brave, sensible, lion-hearted, royal Queen Mab!"
She kept her word. It was one of her many ways to do more than she had promised. I never paid a visit to my dearest cousins, the Frank Mortons, without riding, or driving, up through the woods, and across the creek, and up the two long, and the one short, hill, and along the grass-grown lane to the gray cottage that always reminded me of a "hummer's" nest masked with moss. I spent a good deal of that summer with Cousin Molly Belle, and one week in the very middle of December.
The weather was very mild for midwinter, and the great south room felt too warm to me. So warm that I began to feel sleepy and a little dizzy, and Madam Leigh noticed the yawn I could not quite swallow.