“At last Kingfisher gave the eel a good bang, and it didn’t squirm so much (then I knew the head must have been on the long piece because it wouldn’t have hurt its tail), and the bird began to swallow and work his throat, just like when a snake begins to work a toad down. Once or twice he stopped, and I thought that he was going to choke and keel over. He didn’t, though, but after it was all down, he looked real sorry and uncomfortable and his feathers laid down almost flat to his head, and he crouched there on the boat quite a while before he flew up creek and didn’t fish any more that day.
“Maybe he’d never caught a salt-water eel before, and didn’t know how lively they are; you can’t measure them by mud eels out of still water any more’n you can match snakes with ground-worms.”
He laughs by the summer stream Where the lilies nod and dream, As through the sheen of water cool and clear He sees the chub and sunfish cutting shear.
His are resplendent eyes; His mien is kingliwise; And down the March wind rides he like a king With more than royal purple on his wing.
His palace is the brake Where the rushes shine and shake; His music is the murmur of the stream, And the leaf-rustle where the lilies dream.
Such life as his would be A more than heaven to me; All sun, all bloom, all happy weather, All joys bound in a sheaf together.
No wonder he laughs so loud! No wonder he looks so proud! There are great kings would give their royalty To have one day of his felicity!
“The very name of Phœbe calls us from the Red-wing in the marsh meadows and the Kingfisher by the waterways and brings us home again. Not only within the home acres, but close to the house, barns, and woodshed, for has she not been living in and about them quite as long as we have, or even longer? There was a Phœbe who always built her first nest on the deep sill of the dormer-window of the store-closet, and her second in the bracket that supports the hood of the north window in the guest-room.
“She was not very tidy about her work of nest-building (it seems more natural to call the Phœbe _she_ than _he_), but then, it must be very difficult to make a nest with a high foundation of crumbling moss and mud, with hairs and grass for a lining, without spilling some of the nesting material. My mother used to grumble about having the store-room window-sill remain in such a litter for so long, but she never disturbed the nest, even by brushing away the loose moss, and almost every day she would look through the window to see how the eggs or young were faring, and I thought it a great privilege to be allowed to go to the store-room and sit quite still inside the closed window and watch the Phœbe’s housekeeping.