Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/149

 to stand staring at this legend and wondering about it. A weeping willow hung low over the grave, and Delilah would stand near it picking gnats from its branches with her bill, and speculating about the legend. She wondered for one thing what 'hey-day' meant. Was it anything like a birth-day? Or was it, on the contrary, a day when everything went wrong and ended by a person's being shut into a dark bed-room? Or was it, perhaps, a picnic day—with tarts made of red jam? In that case Delilah felt very sorry for her brother that he should have died on such a day, for if there is an article of diet that spoon-bills really like it is tarts of red jam—made the way Canadians make them.

"But she never could decide.

"And another thing about the epitaph that puzzled her was the concluding clause—'but his virtues are with us still.'