For a while he remained leaning on this fence and looking out across the coming harvest. Twenty yards away a clump of alders was in bloom: some bird was singing out there joyously. It made a _che che che_ sound, also; but its colour was brown.
The idea occurred to Webster that he would recross the pasture to the field on the other side and go on to the turnpike: one ran there, for he heard vehicles passing. He would make inquiry about some piece of forest further from the city. He remembered again what the professor told them:
"Some of you this summer during your vacation may go out to some nearby strip of woods--what little is left of the old forest--in quest of the warbler. Seek the wildest spots you can find. The Kentucky bluegrass landscape is thin and tame now, but there are places of thick undergrowth where the bird still spends his Kentucky summer. Shall I give you my own experience as to where I found him when a boy half a century ago? On my father's farm there was a woodland pasture. The land dipped there into a marshy hollow. In this hollow was a stock pond. Around the edges of the pond grew young cane. It was always low because the cattle browsed it. The highest stalks were scarcely five feet. On the edge of the canebrake a thicket of papaw and blackberry vines added rankness and forest secrecy. It was here I discovered him. The pale green and yellow of his plumage blent with the pale green and yellow of the leaves and stalks. But it was many years before I knew that the bird I had found was the Kentucky warbler. If I had only known it when I was a boy!"
When Webster reached the turnpike and looked up and down, no one was in sight. He sat on the fence and waited. By and bye, coming in from the country, a spring wagon appeared. Curious projections stuck out from the top and sides of boxes in the wagon. When it drew nearer Webster saw poultry being taken to market. He looked at the driver but let him pass unaccosted: there would be little use in applying for information about warblers at headquarters for broilers.
Next from the direction of the city he saw coming a splendid open carriage drawn by a splendid horse and driven by a very pompous coloured coachman in livery. An aristocratic old lady sat in the carriage, shielding her face from the dazzling sunlight with a rich parasol. She leaned out and looked curiously at Webster.