Page:A Kentucky Cardinal.djvu/102

 One fact pleased me: the father returned to his partner under the briers, for he is not of the lower sort who forget the mother when the children are reared. They hold faithfully together during the ever more silent, ever more shadowy autumn days; his warming breast is close to hers through frozen winter nights; and if they both live to see another May she is still all the world to him, and woe to any brilliant vagabond who should warble a wanton love-song under her holy windows.

Georgiana returned the last of August. The next morning she was at her window, looking across into my yard. I was obliged to pass that way, and welcomed her gayly, expressing my thanks for the letter.

“I had to come back, you see,” she said, with calm simplicity. I lingered awkwardly, stripping upward the stalks of some weeds.

“Very few Kentucky birds are migratory,”