Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/301

 never make anything like this! I could come here and sit and dream all day alone if Mama would let me."

He tried to begin the story of his love, but every time his tongue refused to move. He was trembling with nervous hesitation and began to dig a hole in the sand with his heel.

"What is the matter with you to-day? I never saw you so serious and moody."

Just then a female mocking-bird in her modest dove-coloured dress lit on a swaying limb whose tips touched the still water of the eddy at their feet, and her proud mate with head erect, far up on the topmost twig of the ash struck softly the first note of his immortal love poem, the dropping song.

"Listen, he's going to sing his dropping song!" he cried in a whisper.

And they listened. He sang his first stanza in a low dreamy voice, and then as the sweetness of his love and the glory of his triumph grew on his bird soul, he lifted his clear notes higher and higher until the woods on the banks of the river rang with its melody.

His mate turned her eyes upward and quietly twittered a sweet little answer.

His response rang like a silver trumpet far up in the sky! He sprang ten feet into the air and slowly dropped singing, singing his long trilling notes of melting sweetness. He stopped on the topmost twig, sat a moment, never ceasing his matchless song, and then began to fall downward from limb to limb toward his mate, pouring out his soul in mad abandonment of joy, but growing softer, sweeter, more tender as he drew nearer. They could see her tremble now with pride and love at his approach, as she glanced timidly upward, and answered him with maiden modesty. At last when he reached her side, his song was so low and sweet and dream-like it