ed too much like catching
Georgiana with a bait. Therefore, happening to remember, I stopped at
my tool-house, where I keep a little of everything, and took from a peg
a fine old specimen of a goldfinch's nest. This I fastened to the end
of the pole, and hiding my note in it, now felt better satisfied. No
one but Georgiana herself would ever be able to tell what it was that I
might wish to lift up to her at any time; and in case of its being not
a note, but a plum--a berry--a peach--it would be as safe as it was
unseen. This old house of a pair of goldfinches would thus become the
home of our fledgling hopes: every day a new brood of vows would take
flight across its rim into our bosoms.

Watching my chance during the afternoon, when the sewing-girl was not
there, I rushed over and pushed the stick up to the window.

"Georgiana," I called out, "feel in the nest!"

She hurried to the window with her sewing in her arms. The nest swayed
to and fro on a level with her nose.

"What is it?" she cried, drawing back with extreme distaste.

"You feel in it!" I repeated.

"I don't wish to feel in it," she said. "Take it away!"

"There's a young dove in it," I persisted--"a young cooer."

"I don't wish any young cooers," she said, with a grimace.

Seeing that she was not of my mind, I added, pleadingly; "It's a note
from me, Georgiana! This is going to be our little private
post-office!" Georgiana sank back into her chair. She reappeared with
the flush of apple-blossoms and her lashes wet with tears of laughter.
But I do not think that she looked at me unkindly. "Our little private
post-office," I persisted, confidingly.

"How many more little private things are we going to have?" she
inquired, plaintively.

"I can't wait here forever," I said. "This is growing weather; I might
sprout."

"A dry stick will not," said Georgiana, simply, and went back to her
sewing.

I took the hint, and propped the pole against the house under the
window. Later, when I took it down, my note was gone.

I have set the pole under Georgiana's window several times within the
last two or three days, It looks like a little dip-net, high and dry in
the air; but so far as I can see with my unaided eye, it has caught
nothing so large as a gnat. It has attracted no end of attention from
the birds of the neighborhood, however, who never saw a goldfinch's
nest swung to the end of a leafless pole and placed where it could be
so exac