HE ARRIVED that year very early in the season. It was about the twelfth of February that I first heard his plaintive note far up in the maple tree. Could it be Mr. Bluebird, I questioned as I hastened to the window opera-glass in hand? Yes, there he stood, not too comfortably dressed I am afraid, in his blue cap, sky-blue overcoat and russet-brown vest edged with a trimming of feathers soft and white.
There had been a slight fall of snow during the night, and I fancied, from his pensive note, that he was chiding himself for leaving the Mississippi Valley, to which he had journeyed at the first touch of wintry weather in Illinois.
"If it wasn't for the snowdrops, the crocus, the violets, and daffodils," he was saying in a faint sweet warble, "I'd linger longer in the South than I do. They, dear little things, never know, down in their frozen beds, that winter will soon give place to spring till they hear my voice, and so, no matter how bleak the winds or how gray the sky, I sing to let them know I have arrived, my presence heralding the birth of spring and death of winter. It well repays me, I am sure, when, in March under the warm kisses of the sun their pretty heads appear above the ground, and, smiling back at him, out they spring dressed in their new mantles of purple and yellow."
At this moment from the topmost branch of an adjoining maple came a low, sweet, tremulous note very much indeed like a sigh.
"Ah," said he, surveying the new-comer with flattering attention, "that is the young daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird who nested in Lincoln Park last summer. For some reason they decided not to go South this season but remained in Chicago all winter. She strikes me as being a very pretty young-lady bird, and certainly it will be no more than friendly upon my part to fly over there and inquire how she and her family withstood the rigors of a Northern winter."
From Miss Bluebird's demeanor, when he alighted upon a twig beside her, I concluded she greatly disapproved of his unceremonius approach. Prettily lifting her wings and lightly trembling upon her perch she made as if to fly away, but instead only changed her position a little, coyly turning aside her head while listening to what the young gentleman had to say.
Encouraged by this Mr. Bluebird's manner became very friendly indeed, and very soon, reassured by his respectful demeanor and sentiments uttered in a voice of oh, such touching sweetness, the young-lady bird unbent, responding at length in a very amiable manner, I noticed, to her companion's remarks.
The conversation which followed may have been very commonplace or very bright and sparkling, but as there is always an undercurrent of sadness in the bluebird's note, and an air of pensiveness expressed in its actions, one could only conjecture what the tenor of this one might be.
The pair, to my intense satisfaction, the next day met again in the top of the maple tree exchanging confidences in low, tremulous strains of surpassing sweetness, uneasily shifting their stations from time to time, lifting their wings, as is their pretty habit, and trembling lightly upon their perches as though about to rise and fly away.