XIII.
A JUNE ROUND OF CALLS.
"I should like to meet you two in that rig on Fifth Avenue," calmly said our hostess one morning in June, as we started out on our regular round of calls.
What a suggestion! We stared at each other with a new standard of criticism in our eyes. We were not exactly in ordinary visiting costume; but then, neither were we making ordinary visits, for the calling-list of June differs in every way from that of January. The neighbors at whose doors we appeared would be quite as well (or as ill) pleased to see us in our dull green woods dress, with fresh leaves on our hats to convey the impression that we were mere perambulating shrubs, with opera-glasses instead of cards, and camp-stools in place of a carriage, as though we had been in regulation array. Away we went, the big dog prancing ahead with the camp-stool of his mistress.
Our first call was upon a small dame very high up in the world, thirty feet at least. The mention of Fifth Avenue suggests that possibly our manners were not above criticism. We introduced ourselves to Madam Wood-Pewee not by ringing and sending up cards, but by pausing before her door, seating ourselves on our stools, and leveling our glasses at her house. We felt, indeed, that we had almost a proprietary interest in that little lichen-covered nest resting snugly in a fork of a dead branch, for we had assisted in building it, at least by our daily presence, during the week or two that she spent in bringing, in the most desultory way, snips of material, fastening them in place, and moulding the whole by getting in the nest and pressing her breast against it, while turning slowly round and round. Now that she had really settled herself to sit, we never neglected to leave a card upon her, so to speak, every morning.
As we approached we were pleased to see her trim lord and master bearing in his mouth what was no doubt intended for a delicate offering to cheer her weary hours, for a gauzy yellow wing stuck out on each side of his beak, suggesting something uncommonly nice within. He stood a moment till we should pass, looking the picture of unconsciousness, and defying us to assert that he had a house and home anywhere about that tree. But when we did not pass, after hesitatingly hopping from perch to perch nearer the nest, he deliberately diverted yellow wing from its original destiny, swallowed it himself, and wiped his beak with an air that said: "There now! What can you make out of that?"
Ashamed to have deprived the little sitter of her treat, we folded our stools and resumed our march.
How shall one put into words the delights of the woods in June without "dropping into poetry?" Does not our own native poet say:—
"Who speeds to the woodland walks?
To birds and trees who talks?
Cæsar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home."
But if one is not a poet, must he then suffer and enjoy in silence? When he puts aside the leafy portière and enters the cool green paradise of the trees, must he be dumb? Slowly, almost solemnly, we walked up the beautiful road with its carpet of dead leaves. It was as silent of man's ways as if he were not within a thousand miles, and we had all the enjoyment of the deep forest, with the comforting assurance that five minutes' walk would bring us to people.