But suddenly
there was a touch of naturalness. That beautiful brown bird with the
shapely body and the quick, nervous run! No one could mistake him; it
was Bob White. And with him came a flash of the dear New England
landscape three thousand miles away. Another and another showed
himself and was gone. Then I thought of the woods at sunset, and began
to call softly.
The carnivora were being fed not far away; a frightful uproar came
from the cages. The coughing roar of a male lion made the air shiver.
Cockatoos screamed; noisy parrots squawked hideously. Children were
playing and shouting near by. In the yard itself fifty birds were
singing or crying strange notes. Besides all this, the quail I had
seen had been hatched far from home, under a strange mother. So I had
little hope of success.
But as the call grew louder and louder, a liquid yodel came like an
electric shock from a clump of bushes on the left. There he was,
looking, listening. Another call, and he came running toward me.
Others appeared from every direction, and soon a score of quail were
running about, just inside the screen, with soft gurglings like a
hidden brook, doubly delightful to an ear that had longed to hear
them.
City, gardens, beasts, strangers,--all vanished in an instant. I was a
boy in the fields again.
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