210 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
THE WOODCOCK’S WOOING 
Peent, -peent, -peent, -peent, 
From the thick grass on the hill; 
Peent, -peent, -peent, -peent, 
At eve when the world is still. 
Then a sudden whistle of whirring wings, — 
A rush to the upper air, — 
And a rain of maddening music falls 
From the whole sky, — everywhere! 
— WINIFRED BaLuarD BLAKE in Bird-Lore. 
“Dave, please tell us about the bird that you saw on 
the nest,’”’ said Gray Lady, “and how you came to find it.” 
“Half a dozen of us went out to hunt for May-flowers 
(Trailing Arbutus) one Wednesday along the first part of 
April last year. Miss Wilde thought Zella had measles, 
and school was closed two days, but doctor found it 
was only a cold and eating too much sausage meat and 
sweet pickles, and so they broke out, and he gave her 
rhubarb.”’ (Dave, having been asked to tell all about it, 
was bound to omit no detail.) 
“The others of our crowd stayed along by the path that 
runs through the wood, where you saw the birds dance, 
because there are black snakes through the brush there 
that begin to crawl out to sun in April, and the girls were 
seared of them. 
“T went on ahead a little piece, and turned up a side hill 
where there was an old rail fence that divides our woods 
from the Cobbs’ piece. Right in front of me I found a 
bully patch of May-flowers, and I sat down and began 
cutting them with my knife (‘cause they have wiry sort 
