to wait
with what patience we might for the blue.

Our lucky star was in the ascendant that day, for we had not been there
three minutes before a small, inconspicuous bird dropped into the bushes
a few feet from us. My friend's eye followed her, and in a second fell
upon the nest the little creature was lining, in a low maple about two
feet from the ground.

But who was she? For it is one of the difficulties about nests, that the
brightly-colored male, whom one knows so well, is very sure not to show
himself in the neighborhood, and his spouse is certain to look just like
everybody else. However, there is always some mark by which we may know,
and as soon as the watcher secured a good look she announced in an
excited whisper, "We have it! a female blue, building."

So it proved to be, and we planted our seats against trees for backs,
and arranged ourselves to stay. The dog seeing this preparation, and
recognizing it as somewhat permanent, with a heavy sigh laid himself out
full length, and composed himself to sleep.

The work over that nest was one of the prettiest bits of bird-life I
ever watched. Never was a scrap of a warbler, a mere pinch of feathers,
so perfectly delighted with anything as she with that dear little
homestead of hers. It was pretty; it looked outside like the dainty
hanging cradle of a vireo, but instead of being suspended from a
horizontal forked twig, it was held in an upright fork made by four
twigs of the sapling.

The little creature's body seemed too small to hold her joy; she simply
could not bring her mind to leave it. She rushed off a short distance
and brought some infinitesimal atom of something not visible to our
coarse sight, but very important in hers. This she arranged carefully,
then slipped into the nest and moulded it into place by pressing her
breast against it and turning around.

Thus she worked for some time, and then seemed to feel that her task was
over, at least for the moment. Yet she could not tear herself away. She
flew six inches away, then instantly came back and got into the nest,
trying it this way and that. Then she ran up a stem, and in a moment
down again, trying that nest in a new way, from a fresh point of view.
This performance went on a long time, and we found it as impossible to
leave as she did; we were as completely charmed with her ingenuous and
bewitching manners as she was with her new home.

Well indeed was it that we stayed that morning and enr