INTRODUCING G.SELDEN
A bird was perched upon a swaying branch of a slim young sapling near the fence-supported hedge which bounded the park, and Mount Dunstan had stopped to look at it and listen.A soft shower had fallen, and after its passing, the sun coming through the light clouds, there had broken forth again in the trees brief trills and calls and fluting of bird notes.
The sward and ferns glittered fresh green under the raindrops;the young leaves on trees and hedge seemed visibly to uncurl,the uncovered earth looked richly dark and moist, and sent forth the fragrance from its deeps, which, rising to a man's nostrils, stirs and thrills him because it is the scent of life's self.
The bird upon the sapling was a robin, the tiny round body perched upon his delicate legs, plump and bright plumaged for mating.He touched his warm red breast with his beak, fluffed out and shook his feathers, and, swelling his throat, poured forth his small, entranced song.It was a gay, brief, jaunty thing, but pure, joyous, gallant, liquid melody.There was dainty bravado in it, saucy demand and allurement.It was addressed to some invisible hearer of the tender sex, and wheresoever she might be hidden--whether in great branch or low thicket or hedge --there was hinted no doubt in her small wooer's note that she would hear it and in due time respond.Mount Dunstan, listening, even laughed at its confident music.The tiny thing uttering its Call of the World--jubilant in the surety of answer!
Having flung it forth, he paused a moment and waited, his small head turned sideways, his big, round, dew-bright black eye roguishly attentive.Then with more swelling of the throat he trilled and rippled gayly anew, undisturbed and undoubting, but with a trifle of insistence.Then he listened, tried again two or three times, with brave chirps and exultant little roulades."Here am I, the bright-breasted, the liquid-eyed, the slender-legged, the joyous and conquering! Listen to me --listen to me.Listen and answer in the call of God's world."It was the joy and triumphant faith in the tiny note of the tiny thing--Life as he himself was, though Life whose mystery his man's hand could have crushed--which, while he laughed, set Mount Dunstan thinking.Spring warmth and spring scents and spring notes set a man's being in tune with infinite things.
The bright roulade began again, prolonged itself with renewed effort, rose to its height, and ended.From a bush in the thicket farther up the road a liquid answer came.And Mount Dunstan's laugh at the sound of it was echoed by another which came apparently from the bank rising from the road on the other side of the hedge, and accompanying the laugh was a good-natured nasal voice.
"She's caught on.There's no mistake about that.I guess it's time for you to hustle, Mr.Rob."Mount Dunstan laughed again.Jem Salter had heard voices like it, and cheerful slang phrases of the same order in his ranch days.On the other side of his park fence there was evidently sitting, through some odd chance, an American of the cheery, casual order, not sufficiently polished by travel to have lost his picturesque national characteristics.
Mount Dunstan put a hand on a broken panel of fence and leaped over into the road.
A bicycle was lying upon the roadside grass, and on the bank, looking as though he had been sheltering himself under the hedge from the rain, sat a young man in a cheap bicycling suit.His features were sharply cut and keen, his cap was pushed back from his forehead, and he had a pair of shrewdly careless boyish eves.
Mount Dunstan liked the look of him, and seeing his natural start at the unheralded leap over the gap, which was quite close to him, he spoke.
"Good-morning," he said."I am afraid I startled you.""Good-morning," was the response."It was a bit of a jolt seeing you jump almost over my shoulder.Where did you come from? You must have been just behind me.""I was," explained Mount Dunstan."Standing in the park listening to the robin."The young fellow laughed outright.
"Say," he said, "that was pretty fine, wasn't it? Wasn't he getting it off his chest! He was an English robin, I guess.
American robins are three or four times as big.I liked that little chap.He was a winner.""You are an American?"
"Sure," nodding."Good old Stars and Stripes for mine.
First time I've been here.Came part for business and part for pleasure.Having the time of my life."Mount Dunstan sat down beside him.He wanted to hear him talk.He had liked to hear the ranchmen talk.This one was of the city type, but his genial conversational wanderings would be full of quaint slang and good spirits.He was quite ready to converse, as was made manifest by his next speech.
"I'm biking through the country because I once had an old grandmother that was English, and she was always talking about English country, and how green things was, and how there was hedges instead of rail fences.She thought there was nothing like little old England.Well, as far as roads and hedges go, I'm with her.They're all right.I wanted a fellow Imet crossing, to come with me, but he took a Cook's trip to Paris.He's a gay sort of boy.Said he didn't want any green lanes in his.He wanted Boolyvard." He laughed again and pushed his cap farther back on his forehead."Said Iwasn't much of a sport.I tell YOU, a chap that's got to earn his fifteen per, and live on it, can't be TOO much of a sport.""Fifteen per?" Mount Dunstan repeated doubtfully.
His companion chuckled.
"I forgot I was talking to an Englishman.Fifteen dollars per week--that's what `fifteen per' means.That's what he told me he gets at Lobenstien's brewery in New York.Fifteen per.Not much, is it?""How does he manage Continental travel on fifteen per?"Mount Dunstan inquired.