Had that little red-feathered fellow out there on the snow-clad evergreen-tree gone crazy? The bishop came from the city, and knew neither the spruce nor the cardinal by name. The cardinal was dipping and rising about the tree, fluttering and darting, now here, now there, from branch to twig, from twig to branch.
“And always as if he had his red-ringed small eye on the gallery,” said the bishop, who meant by “gallery,” himself at the window.
Just then the cardinal left the big spruce-tree altogether, and dropped to the snow-mantled clump of spirea nearer the house. Immediately there appeared upon the branches of the spruce two flashing, swaggering, top-knotted blue jays.
The cardinal flew from the spirea; down from the spruce dropped the jays to the bush that he had left; and almost at once two brown and speckled sapsuckers perched upon the branches of the evergreen.
The bishop looked on with interest. Almost parrot-like the cardinal was clinging with the coral-red claws of his coral-red legs to the sharp edge of the window-sill; his red head and coral beak were held sidewise, and his beady eyes were upturned sharply. Behind him was a world that was cold and desolate and threatening. The white flakes were falling persistently.
Then the bell of the bishop’s telephone rang. The doctor who twice a day came in to see him and cheer him up had forbidden him to use his eyes or to do any hard work or to see his secretary, who had not had the measles; but he could use his ears and his tongue. So he had had the telephone brought into his room and set upon a table, and he talked daily with his dean at the cathedral in town, with various members of his clergy, and with other official persons.
He turned from the window at the ring, and lifted the receiver.
“Bishop Herbert at the telephone. Yes?” said he, and his voice was deep and genial and sonorous.
“He is telling you that he is hungry, please,” said a voice, small and anxious.
“Who is hungry? Who is this speaking?”