"Why, certainly! How forgetful I am! Your talk is too interesting for me to
think of anything else," and he placed her on a flat rock by the side of the
lane while he leaned against the wall.

Bees and other insects were humming around them; a butterfly fluttered over
the fence and alighted on a dandelion almost at her feet; meadow larks were
whistling their limpid notes in the adjoining fields, while from the trees
about the house beneath them came the songs of many birds, blending with the
babble of the brook which ran not far away.

"Oh, how beautiful, how strangely beautiful it all is!"

"Yes, when you come to think of it, it is real pretty," he replied. "It's a
pity we get so used to such things that we don't notice 'em much. I should
feel miserable enough, though, if I couldn't live in just such a place. I
shouldn't wonder if I was a good deal like that robin yonder. I like to be
free and enjoy the spring weather, but I suppose neither he nor I think or
know how fine it all is."

"Well, both you and the robin seem a part of it," she said, laughing.

"Oh, no, no!" he replied with a guffaw which sent the robin off in alarm. "I
aint beautiful and never was."

She joined his laugh, but said with a positive little nod, "I'm right, though.
The robin isn't a pretty bird, yet everybody likes him."

"Except in cherry time. Then he has an appetite equal to mine. But everybody
don't like me. In fact, I think I'm generally disliked in this town."