10 THE COUSINS.

red-bud, and the myrtles, and the bays, and the
laurels, and the wild orange, and the wild olive,
and the spring violets, and—and—a thousand
others, whose names I cannot pretend to remem-
ber, but which Mary rattles off, mingling trees,
and shrubs, and vines, and plants in most bewil-
dering confusion. Then, when she leaves the
woods and comes home again, it is to tell you of
the orange-groves, which often showed the golden
fruit of the last year and the white flowers of this
gleaming together from its polished dark-green
leaves, and of the birds—the red-bird, with its
one clear, sweet note—the black-bird, with his
merry whistle, and the mocking-bird, that prince
of songsters. ‘Not one poor bird shut up in a
cage,” she says—and here she is apt to cast the
same glance at her aunt’s birdcage which she had
given to her uncle’s fireplace—‘“ but dozens of
them flying from bough to bough, and tree to
tree, and singing so joyously—just as if they
were so happy that they could not help it.”

But Mary had remembrances of her home which
touched me more than all these things. She told
of her mother’s reading and praying by the bed-