"Never heard of Audubon?" cried Sylvia, delighted to show up my
ignorance.

"Only of the great Audubon, Miss Sylvia; the _great_, the very
_great_ Audubon."

"Well, this was the _great_, the very _great_ Audubon. He lived
in Henderson, and kept a corn-mill. He and my father were friends,
and he gave my father some of his early drawings of Kentucky
birds. Georgiana has them now, and that is where she gets her love
of birds--from my father, who got his from the _great_, the very
_great_ Audubon."

"Would Miss Cobb let me see these drawings?" I asked, eagerly.

"She might; but she prizes them as much as if they were stray leaves
out of the only Bible in the world."

As Sylvia turned inside out this pocket of her mind, there had
dropped out a key to her sister's conduct. Now I understood her
slighting attitude towards my knowledge of birds. But I shall
feel some interest in Miss Cobb from this time on. I never dreamed
that she could bring me fresh news of that rare spirit whom I have
so wished to see, and for one week in the woods with whom I would
give any year of my life. Are they possibly the Henderson family
to whom Audubon intrusted the box of his original drawings during
his absence in Philadelphia, and who let a pair of Norway rats rear
a family in it, and cut to pieces nearly a thousand inhabitants of
the air?