AN ISLAND GARDEN 125 



lovely the skies of May, holds the fair world in a 

 light embrace for this one day ; a few white clouds 

 are losing themselves in the pure blue above; a 

 few sails gleam afar. Though the tide is full, it 

 makes no murmur; I hear only the drowsy bees 

 in the Hollyhocks, the young fledgling song- 

 sparrows trying their voices, learning the sweet 

 song their parents are pouring at intervals on the 

 quiet air, and the chirp and twitter of other birds, 

 birds of passage, with finch and thrush, nuthatch 

 and late robin, the whistle of a whitethroat, the 

 clanking jar of the kingfisher that perches on the 

 mast of the faithful little tug Pinafore (so many 

 years our only link with the mainland in winter), 

 as she lies at her wharf in the upper cove, and 

 shows his handsome blue and gray plumage and 

 white collar glittering in the sun. A fisherman 

 draws his nets in a shining white skiff, but he 

 makes no sound that I can hear. The season is 

 so divinely tranquil and sweet, all things are so 

 beautiful in and about the little isle, from the glit- 

 tering seal that emerges from the waves to sun 

 himself sometimes on the seaweed-covered rocks, 

 to the smallest flower that blossoms in my gar- 

 den ; from the wonderful jelly-fish that spreads its 

 large diaphanous cup, expanding and contracting 

 as it swims, and colored like a great melting opal 

 in the pale-green, translucent water, to the bright- 

 eyed bats that flitter at dusk when the evening 

 star is sparkling above the rich red of the sunset 

 sky. And that reminds me that all summer a 

 white bat has skittered ghostly with its dark com- 

 panions, as soon as twilight fell, about the place. 



