COWS AND THEIR FEATHERED NAMESAKES 



CHAPTER XX 



The Coic-bird: Molbthrus Ater 



IN THE PASTURES 



THE sky was cloudless, the air was still. The dust lay thick 

 on the country road. There were so many cicadas revelling in 

 the drowsy heat and so many thirsty tree-toads calling for rain 

 that it was as if one cicada and one tree-toad travelled with you, 

 singing all the way. To the north lay fields of velvet-green where 

 clover quickly sprang to cover the brown stems of the lately 

 mown crop; dull tan where the timothy that now packed swelling 

 barns had grown; gold stubble thickly dotted with the sheaves 

 of garnered wheat; waving blue-green seas of unripened oats and 

 the jade-coloured blades of growing corn. 



Above the shorn fields the Larks flung down an interrogatory, 

 "Spring o' the year?" as if they feared to state for fact a matter 

 which might be open to question; for the season had been pecu- 

 liar. Winter had lingered late. Then the spring rains began, 

 cold and prolonged so that the leaves had been unusually slow in 



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