And curled around in many a winding fold.
The topmost branch a mother-bird possessed;
Eight callow infants filled the mossy nest;
Herself the ninth: the serpent as he hung
Stretched his black jaws, and crashed the crying young:
While hovering near, with miserable moan,
The drooping mother wailed her children gone.
The mother last, as round the nest she flew,
Seized by the beating wing, the monster slew.'"

"Bravo!" cried Leonard. "I am now quite reconciled to your four years at
college. Heretofore I had thought you had passed through it as Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego passed through the fiery furnace, without even the
smell of fire upon their garments, but I now at last detect a genuine
Greek aroma."

"I think Burt's quotation very pat," said Amy, "and I could not have
believed that anything written so long ago would apply so marvellously to
what I have seen to-day."

"Marvellously pat, indeed," said Leonard. "And since your quotation has
led to such a nice little pat on your classical back, Burt, you must feel
repaid for your long burning of the midnight oil."

Burt flushed slightly, but he turned Leonard's shafts with smiling
assurance, and said: "Amply repaid. I have ever had an abiding confidence
that my education would be of use to me at some time."

The long days grew hot, and often sultry, but the season brought
unremitting toil. The click of the mowing-machine, softened by distance,