CHAPTER I - SOMEBODY IS EXPECTED
On May Day the feathered folk
in Pleasant Valley began to stop, look and listen.
They were expecting somebody.
“Have you seen him?” Rusty Wren asked
Jolly Robin.
Jolly Robin said that he hadn’t;
but he added that he was on the lookout.
“Have you heard his song?”
little Mr. Chippy inquired eagerly of Mr. Blackbird.
“No!” that dusky rascal
replied. “Not yet! Maybe he isn’t
coming here this summer.” Mr. Blackbird
liked to tease little Mr. Chippy. And generally
when he tried to, he succeeded.
“Oh! Don’t say that!”
Mr. Chippy exclaimed. “If I couldn’t
hear his gay voice I shouldn’t care to spend
a summer here myself.”
Over the meadow, beyond the stone
wall where Mr. Chippy made his home in a wild grapevine,
Mr. Meadowlark flew to the swampy place where the
rushes grew, just to find a Red-winged Blackbird that
he knew, in order to learn whether he had seen or
heard the friend everybody was watching for.
Perched upon a swaying last year’s
cattail, Mr. Red-winged Blackbird shook his head in
reply. And he said that no doubt it would be a
week before the looked-for arrival. “The
season’s a bit backward,” Mr. Red-winged
Blackbird remarked. “So I don’t expect
to set eyes on him to-day though I have
known him to get here as early as May Day.”
Mr. Meadowlark confessed that he was disappointed.
“It would be a much gayer May
Day,” he said, “if his rollicking song
rang over the meadow.”
“What’s the matter with
your own singing?” Mr. Red-winged Blackbird
asked him meaning that in his opinion Mr.
Meadowlark had no reason to be ashamed of his own
voice.
“My song is not like his,”
Mr. Meadowlark answered. And he sighed as he
spoke. “To be sure, some people are kind
enough to say that my singing is unusually sweet.
But you know yourself that there isn’t a songster
anywhere that can carol so joyfully as Bobby Bobolink.”
Mr. Red-winged Blackbird did not dispute
that statement. How could he, when the birds
were all waiting so eagerly to hear Bobby Bobolink’s
voice?
“He has a way” Mr.
Meadowlark went on “a way of making
almost any summer’s day a gay holiday.
He is just bubbling over with happiness; and he can’t
seem to get his notes out fast enough.”
“Yes!” Mr. Red-winged
Blackbird chimed in. “He’s a cheerful,
happy-go-lucky chap. And he wears gay clothes,
too.”
“What’s the matter with
your own clothes?” Mr. Meadowlark inquired meaning
that in his opinion Mr. Red-winged Blackbird’s
black suit, with the shoulders scarlet and buff, was
about as striking as anybody could want.
Mr. Red-winged Blackbird was pleased.
Anybody could see that. He bowed and spread his
wings and tail, and uttered his well-known call, “Conk-err-ee!”
before he made any reply.
“People often compliment me
on my taste in colors,” he said at last.
“And for year-round wear I do think my
suit is about as good as anybody could ask for.
But you know yourself that during the first half of
the summer Bobby Bobolink makes a cheerful sight, when
his black and white and buff back flashes above the
meadow.”
And Mr. Meadowlark couldn’t
deny it; for he knew that it was true.