"Did I say blue? I meant black of course. Mary thought they looked blue and that confused me. And its breast was white with brown marks on it."

"What size was it?" asked Roberta.

Katherine looked doubtful. "What should you say, Mary?"

"Well, it was quite small--about the size of a sparrow or a robin, I thought."

"They're quite different sizes," said Roberta wearily. "Your old man must have been color-blind. It couldn't have had a pink head. Who ever heard of a pink-headed bird?"

"We three are not color-blind," Katherine reminded her. "And then there's the name." Roberta sighed deeply. The new members of the Mary-bird club were very unmanageable.

Meanwhile Mary was industriously counting the names on her list, which must be handed in the next day. "I think I'd better put the euthuma down, Roberta," she said finally. "We saw it all right. They won't look the list over very carefully, but they will notice how many birds are on it, and even with the pink-headed euthuma I haven't but forty-five. I rather wish now that I'd bought a text-book, but I thought it was a waste of money when you knew all about the birds, and it would certainly be a waste of money now."

"Oh, yes," said Roberta. "If only the library hadn't wanted its copy back quite so soon!"

"It was disagreeable of them, wasn't it?" said Mary cheerfully, copying away on her list. "You were going to look up the nestle too. Girls, did we hear the nestle sing?"

"It whistled like a blue jay," said Katherine promptly.

"It couldn't," protested Roberta. "You said it was only six inches long."

"On the plan of a blue jay's call, but smaller, Roberta," explained Betty pacifically.

"Well, it's funny that you can never find any of these birds when I'm with you," said Roberta.

Katherine looked scornful. "We were mighty lucky to see them even twice, I think," she retorted.

Next day Mary came home from zoology 1a, which to add to its other unpleasant features met in the afternoon, wearing the air of a martyr to circ.u.mstance. Roberta, Katherine and Betty happened to be sitting on the piazza translating Livy together. "Girls," she demanded, as she came up the steps, "if I get you the box of Huyler's that Mr. Burgess sent me will you tell me the truth about those birds?"

"She had the lists read in cla.s.s!" shouted Katherine.

"I knew it!" said Roberta in tragic tones.

"Did you tell her about the shelcuff's neck?" inquired Betty.

Mary sat down on the piazza railing with her feet cushioned on a lexicon. "I told her all about the shelcuff," she said, "likewise the euthuma and the nestle. What is more, the head of the zoology department was visiting the cla.s.s, so I also told him, and when I stayed to explain he stayed too, and--oh, you little wretches!"

"Not at all," said Katherine. "We waited until you'd made a reputation for cleverness and been taken into a society. I think we were considerateness itself."

Roberta was gazing sadly at Mary. "Why did you try all those queer ones?" she asked. "You knew I wasn't sure of them."

"I had to, my dear. She asked us for the rare names on our lists. I was the third one she came to, and the others had floundered around and told about birds I'd never heard of. I didn't really know which of mine were rare, because I'd never seen any of them but once, you know, and I was afraid I should strike something that was a good deal commoner than a robin, and then it would be all up with me. So I boldly read off these three, because I was sure they were rare. You should have seen her face when I got to the pink-headed one," said Mary, beginning suddenly to appreciate the humor of the situation. "Did you invent them?"

"Only the names," said Betty, "and the stories about finding them. I thought of nestle, and Katherine made up the others. Aren't they lovely names, Roberta?"

"Yes," said Roberta, "but think of the fix Mary is in."

Mary smiled serenely. "Don't worry, Roberta," she said. "The names were so lovely and the shelcuff's neck and the note of the nestle and all, and I am honestly so near-sighted, that I don't think Miss Carter will have the heart to condition me. But girls, where did you get the descriptions? Professor Lawrence particularly wanted to know."

Betty looked at Katherine and the two burst into peals of laughter.

"Mary Brooks, you invented most of those yourself," explained Katherine, when she could speak. "We just showed you the first bird we happened to see and told you its new name and you'd say, 'Why it has a green crest and yellow wings!' or 'How funny its neck is! It must have a pouch.' All we had to do was to encourage you a little."

"And suppress you a little when you put colors like pink and blue into the same bird," continued Betty, "so Roberta wouldn't get too suspicious."

"Then those birds were just common, ordinary ones that I'd seen before?"

"Exactly. The nestle was a blue jay, and the euthuma was a sparrow. We couldn't see what the shelcuff was ourselves, the tree was so tall.

"'The primrose by a river's brim, A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.'"

quoted Mary blithely. "You can never put that on my tombstone."

"Better tell your friend Dr. Hinsdale about your vivid ornithological imagination," suggested Katherine. "It might interest him."

"Oh, I shall," said Mary easily. "But to-night, young ladies, you will be pleased to learn that I am invited up to Professor Lawrence's to dinner, so that I can see his bird skins. Incidentally I shall meet his fascinating brother. In about ten minutes I shall want to be hooked up, Roberta."

"She's one too many for us, isn't she?" said Katherine, as Mary went gaily off, followed by the devoted Roberta, declaring in loud tones that the Mary-bird club was dissolved.

"I wish things that go wrong didn't bother me any more than they do her," said Betty wistfully.

"Cheer up," urged Katherine, giving her a bearish hug. "You'll win in the golf again to-morrow, and everything will come out all right in the end."

"Everything? What do you mean?" inquired Betty sharply.

"Why, singles and doubles--twosomes and foursomes you call them, don't you? They'll all come out right."

A moment later Katherine burst in upon her long-suffering roommate with a vehemence that made every cup on the tea-table rattle. "I almost let her know what we thought," she said, "but I guess I smoothed it over. Do you suppose Eleanor Watson isn't going to make up with her at all?"

CHAPTER XVIII

INTO PARADISE--AND OUT

It was a glorious summer twilight. The air was sweet with the odor of lilacs and honeysuckle. One by one the stars shone softly out in the velvet sky, across which troops of swallows swooped and darted, twittering softly on the wing. Near the western horizon the golden glow of sunset still lingered. It was a night for poets to sing of, a night to revel in and to remember; but it was a.s.suredly not a night for study.

Gaslight heated one's room to the boiling point. Closed windows meant suffocation; open ones--since there are no screens in the Harding boarding house--let in troops of fluttering moths and burly June-bugs.

"And the moral of that is, work while it is yet light," proclaimed Mary Brooks, ringing her bicycle bell suggestively.

There was a sudden commotion on the piazza and then Betty's clear voice rose above the tumult. "We won it, one up! Isn't that fine? Oh no, not the singles; we go on with them to-morrow, but I can't possibly win. Oh, I'm so hot!"

Eleanor Watson smiled grimly as these speeches floated up to her from below. She had been lounging all the breathless afternoon, trying vainly to get rid of a headache; and the next day's lessons were still to be learned.

"Ouch, how I hate June-bugs," she muttered, stopping for the fifth time in as many minutes to drive out a buzzing intruder. She had just gotten one out when another flew straight at her unperceived and tangled himself in her hair. That was the limit of endurance. With one swift movement Eleanor turned off the gas, with another she pulled down her hair and released the prisoned beetle. Then she twisted up the soft coil again in the dark and went out into the sweet spring dusk.

At the next corner she gave an angry little exclamation and turned back toward the house. The girls had deserted the piazza before she came down, and now the only light seemed to be in Betty's room. Every window there was shut, so it was no use to call. Eleanor climbed the stairs and knocked. Katherine and Betty were just starting for a trolley ride, to cool off the champion, Katherine explained; but Helen was going to be in all the evening.