Suddenly I saw Billy, who had wandered from the table, sitting on the steps bending over a tiny bird's egg in his open hand. I knew that he must have taken it from some low-hung nest, but taken it in innocence, for he looked at it with solicitude as an object of tender and fragile beauty. He had never given a thought to the mother's days of patient brooding, nor that he was robbing the summer world of one bird's flight and one bird's song.
"Did you hear the whippoorwills singing last night, Daddy?" I asked.
"I did, indeed, and long before sunrise this morning. There must be a new family in our orchard, I think; but then we have coaxed hundreds of birds our way this spring by our little houses, our crumbs, and our drinking dishes."
"Yes, we have never had so many since we came here to live. Look at that little brown bird flying about in the tall apple-tree, Francie; she seems to be in trouble."
"P'r'haps it's Mrs. Smiff's wenomous cat," exclaimed Francie, running to look for a particularly voracious animal that lived across the fields, but had been known to enter our bird-Eden.
"Hear this, Daddy; isn't it pretty?" I said, taking up the "Life of Dorothy Grey."
Billy pricked up his ears, for he can never see a book opened without running to join the circle, so eager he is not to lose a precious word.
"The wren sang early this morning" (I read slowly). "We talked about it at breakfast and how many people there were who would not be aware of it; and E. said, 'Fancy, if God came in and said: "Did you notice my wren?" and they were obliged to say they had not known it was there!'"
Billy rose quietly and stole away behind the trees, returning in a few moments, empty-handed, to stand by my side.
"Does God know how many eggs there are in a bird's nest, mother?" he asked.
"People have so many different ideas about what God sees and takes note of, that it's hard to say, sonny. Of course you remember that the Bible says not one sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it."
"The mother bird can't count her eggs, can she, mother?"
"Oh! Billy, you do ask the hardest questions; ones that I can never answer by Yes and No! She broods her eggs all day and all night and never lets them get cold, so she must know, at any rate, that they are going to BE birds, don't you think? And of course she wouldn't want to lose one; that's the reason she's so faithful!"
"Well!" said Billy, after a long pause, "I don't care quite so much about the mother, because sometimes there are five eggs in a weeny, weeny nest that never could hold five little ones without their scrunching each other and being uncomfortable. But if God should come in and say: 'Did you take my egg, that was going to be a bird?' I just couldn't bear it!"
June 15, 19-.
Another foreign mail is in and the village postmistress has sent an impassioned request that I steam off the stamps for her boy's album, enriched during my residence here by specimens from eleven different countries. ("Mis' Beresford beats the Wanderin' Jew all holler if so be she's be'n to all them places, an' come back alive!"--so she says to Himself.) Among the letters there is a budget of loose leaves from Salemina's diary, Salemina, who is now Mrs. Gerald La Touche, wife of Professor La Touche, of Trinity College, Dublin, and stepmother to Jackeen and Broona La Touche.
It is midsummer, College is not in session, and they are at Rosnaree House, their place in County Meath.
Salemina is the one of our trio who continues to move in grand society. She it is who dines at the Viceregal Lodge and Dublin Castle. She it is who goes with her distinguished husband for week-ends with the Master of the Horse, the Lord Chancellor, and the Dean of the Chapel Royal. Francesca, it is true, makes her annual bow to the Lord High Commissioner at Holyrood Palace and dines there frequently during Assembly Week; and as Ronald numbers one Duke, two Earls, and several Countesses and Dowager Countesses in his parish, there are awe-inspiring visiting cards to be found in the silver salver on her hall table,--but Salemina in Ireland literally lives with the great, of all classes and conditions! She is in the heart of the Irish Theatre and the Modern Poetry movements,--and when she is not hobnobbing with playwrights and poets she is consorting with the Irish nobility and gentry.
I cannot help thinking that she would still be Miss Peabody, of Salem, Massachusetts, had it not been for my generous and helpful offices, and those of Francesca! Never were two lovers, parted in youth in America and miraculously reunited in middle age in Ireland, more recalcitrant in declaring their mutual affection than Dr. La Touche and Salemina! Nothing in the world divided them but imaginary barriers. He was not rich, but he had a comfortable salary and a dignified and honourable position among men. He had two children, but they were charming, and therefore so much to the good. Salemina was absolutely "foot loose" and tied down to no duties in America, so no one could blame her for marrying an Irishman. She had never loved any one else, and Dr. La Touche might have had that information for the asking; but he was such a bat for blindness, adder for deafness, and lamb for meekness that because she refused him once, when she was the only comfort of an aged mother and father, he concluded that she would refuse him again, though she was now alone in the world. His late wife, a poor, flighty, frivolous invalid, the kind of woman who always entangles a sad, vague, absent-minded scholar, had died six years before, and never were there two children so in need of a mother as Jackeen and Broona, a couple of affectionate, hot-headed, bewitching, ragged, tousled Irish darlings. I would cheerfully have married Dr. Gerald myself, just for the sake of his neglected babies, but I dislike changes and I had already espoused Himself.