After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 | Page 2

with a bait. Therefore, happening to remember, I stopped at my tool-house, where I keep a little of everything, and took from a peg a fine old specimen of a goldfinch's nest. This I fastened to the end of the pole, and hiding my note in it, now felt better satisfied. No one but Georgiana herself would ever be able to tell what it was that I might wish to lift up to her at any time; and in case of its being not a note, but a plum--a berry--a peach--it would be as safe as it was unseen. This old house of a pair of goldfinches would thus become the home of our fledgling hopes: every day a new brood of vows would take flight across its rim into our bosoms.
Watching my chance during the afternoon, when the sewing-girl was not there, I rushed over and pushed the stick up to the window.
"Georgiana," I called out, "feel in the nest!"
She hurried to the window with her sewing in her arms. The nest swayed to and fro on a level with her nose.
"What is it?" she cried, drawing back with extreme distaste.
"You feel in it!" I repeated.
"I don't wish to feel in it," she said. "Take it away!"
"There's a young dove in it," I persisted--"a young cooer."
"I don't wish any young cooers," she said, with a grimace.
Seeing that she was not of my mind, I added, pleadingly; "It's a note from me, Georgiana! This is going to be our little private post-office!" Georgiana sank back into her chair. She reappeared with the flush of apple-blossoms and her lashes wet with tears of laughter. But I do not think that she looked at me unkindly. "Our little private post-office," I persisted, confidingly.
"How many more little private things are we going to have?" she inquired, plaintively.
"I can't wait here forever," I said. "This is growing weather; I might sprout."
"A dry stick will not," said Georgiana, simply, and went back to her sewing.
I took the hint, and propped the pole against the house under the window. Later, when I took it down, my note was gone.
I have set the pole under Georgiana's window several times within the last two or three days, It looks like a little dip-net, high and dry in the air; but so far as I can see with my unaided eye, it has caught nothing so large as a gnat. It has attracted no end of attention from the birds of the neighborhood, however, who never saw a goldfinch's nest swung to the end of a leafless pole and placed where it could be so exactly reached by the human hand. In particular it has fallen under the notice of a pair of wrens, which are like women, in that they usually have some secret business behind their curiosity. The business in this case is the matter of their own nest, which they have located in a broken horse-collar in my saddle-house. At such seasons they are alert for appropriating building materials that may have been fetched to hand by other birds; and they have already abstracted a piece of candle-wick from the bottom of my post-office.
Georgiana has been chilly towards me for two days, and I think is doing her best not to freeze up altogether. I have racked my brain to know why; but I fear that my brain is not of the sort to discover what is the matter with a woman when nothing really is the matter. Moreover, as I am now engaged to Georgiana, I have thought it better that she should begin to bring her explanations to me--the steady sun that will melt all her uncertain icicles.
At last this morning she remarked, but very carelessly, "You didn't answer my note."
"What note, Georgiana?" I asked, thunderstruck.
She gave me such a look.
"Didn't you get the note I put into that--into that--" Her face grew pink with vexation and disgust.
"Did you put a note into the--into the--" I could not have spoken the word just then.
I retired to my arbor, where I sat for half an hour with my head in my hands. What could have become of Georgiana's note? A hand might have filched it; unlikely. A gust of wind have whisked it out; impossible. I debated and rejected every hypothesis to the last one. Acting upon this, I walked straight to the saddle-house, and in a dark corner peered at the nest of the wrens. A speck of white paper was visible among the sticks and shavings. I tore the nest out and shook it to pieces. How those wrens did rage! The note was so torn and mudded that I could not read it. But suppose a jay had carried it to the high crotch of some locust! I ran joyfully back to