morning brought the first liquid golden notes of the orioles.
They had arrived at dawn, and were overjoyed with their
homecoming, for they were darting from bank to bank singing
exquisitely on wing. There seemed no end to the bird voices that
floated with the river, and yet there was no beginning to the one
voice for which the Cardinal waited with passionate longing.

The oriole's singing was so inspiring that it tempted the
Cardinal to another effort, and perching where he gleamed crimson
and black against the April sky, he tested his voice, and when
sure of his tones, he entreatingly called: "Come here! Come
here!"

Just then he saw her! She came daintily over the earth, soft as
down before the wind, a rosy flush suffusing her plumage, a coral
beak, her very feet pink--the shyest, most timid little thing
alive. Her bright eyes were popping with fear, and down there
among the ferns, anemones and last year's dried leaves, she
tilted her sleek crested head and peered at him with frightened
wonder and silent helplessness.

It was for this the Cardinal had waited, hoped, and planned for
many days. He had rehearsed what he conceived to be every point
of the situation, and yet he was not prepared for the thing that
suddenly happened to him. He had expected to reject many
applicants before he selected one to match his charms; but
instantly this shy little creature, slipping along near earth,
taking a surreptitious peep at him, made him feel a very small
bird, and he certainly never before had felt small. The crushing
possibility that somewhere there might be a cardinal that was