140 MY LADY IN GREEN. 



with wide, calm eyes, and did not shrink from 

 the finger which gently stroked their backs. 

 The home which had held them was almost a 

 complete wreck, hardly more than a flattened 

 platform, but they clung to it still, and I knew 

 that I should miss the sight I longed for, the 

 first flight. I stayed all day, putting off the 

 parting till the last possible moment, watching 

 and hoping ; but when I started for the night 

 train, I left the pair still sitting on the ruins 

 of their nest. And thus ended the only glimpse 

 into fairyland I shall ever enjoy. 



A few days later came to me, several hundred 

 miles away, the word that the elder bird (who 

 was a Sunday baby) had taken flight the day 

 he was three weeks old, and had stayed about 

 his native apple-tree all day, while the younger 

 clung to the wreck for two days more, and no 

 one chanced to see him fly. 



