Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/316

 birds keep the colour of its morning. Eos has kissed them.

Farther inland yet, the jays came, saddened and stupid as all these little travellers are when they first arrive in a strange country, missing their dark pine forests of Scandinavia, of Lithuania, of Thuringia. With them there came the redwings, the redstarts, the redbreasts from the mountains, and from further afield, the English and French robin, dearest, cheeriest, brightest, kindest of little birds, and even the robin was sorrowful and timid at the first, though, soon plucking up his gallant little spirit, he sang upon a myrtle spray as gaily as on his native hawthorn branch or apple bough in Westmoreland or Calvados.

All these and many more she watched as they came, singly, or in bands, according to their habits, upon the chilly wind that blew from their native north countries.

In the moorland ponds and the marsh rivulets there were the persecuted coots with her all the year round, the water-hens, too, in their demure garb of olive-brown and grey, and their brilliant relative the beautiful porphyrion, showing the sapphires and the rubies of his feathers in all seasons, amidst