"
She continued almost in a whisper, her rose-suffused cheeks and moist
eyes hidden from my sight as the lips murmured their loving words into
my ear,--"Though the nestling never looked from under the wing, do you
think she knows not what to expect when she is bought from the nest?
She dares not struggle in the hand that snatches her; much more did
she deserve to be rated and rapped for fluttering in that which saved
her life. Bought twice over, caged by right as by might--was her
thought midnight to your eyes, when she wondered at the look that
watched her so quietly, the hand that would not try to touch lest it
should scare her, the patience that soothed and coaxed her to perch on
the outstretched finger, like a flower-bird tamed at last? Do you
think that name, given her by lips which softened even their words of
fondness for her ear, did not go to her heart straight as the esve
flies home, or that it could ever be forgotten? There is a chant young
girls are fond of, which tells more than I can say."
Her tones fell so low that I should have lost them, had her lips not
actually touched my ear while she chanted the strange words in the
sweetest notes of her sweet voice:--
"Never yet hath single sun
Seen a flower-bird tamed and won;
Sun and stars shall quit the sky
Ere a bird so tamed shall fly.
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