ot to the first plum-tree she went on to the second.
Winifred wore a grey cotton dress; it was short, not yet to her ankles,
and her broad hat shaded her from the sun. When she reached the second
group of plum-trees she saw a scarlet tanager sitting on a telegraph
pole--for along the margin of the road, standing among uncut grass and
flowers and trees, tall barkless stumps were set, holding the wires on
high. Perhaps they were ugly things, but a tree whose surface is uncut
is turned on Nature's lathe; at any rate, to the child the poles were
merely a part of the Canadian road, and the scarlet tanager showed its
plumage to advantage as it sat on the bare wood. There was no turning
back then; even Sophia would have neglected her morning task to see a
tanager! She crept up under it, and the bird, like a streak of red
flame, shot forth from the pole, to a group of young pine trees further
on.

So Winifred strayed up the road about a quarter of a mile, till she came
to the gate of the Harmon garden. The old house, always half concealed,
was quickly being entirely hidden by the massive Curtains the young
leaves were so busily weaving. The tanager turned in here, as what bird
would not when it spied a tract of ground where Nature was riotously
decking a bower with the products of all the roots and seeds of a
deserted garden! There was many a gap in the weather-beaten fence where
the child might have followed, but she dare not, for she was in great
awe of the place, because the preacher who was said to have died and
come to life again lived there. She only stood and looked through the
fence, and the tanager--having flitted near the house--soared and
settled among the feathery boughs of a proud acacia tree; she had to
look across half an acre of bushes to see him, and then he was so high
and so far that it seemed (as when looking at the stars) she did not
see him, but only the ray of scarlet light that travelled from him
through an atmosphere of leaflets. It was very trying, for any one knows
that it is _something_ to be able to say that you have come to close
quarters with a scarlet tanager.

Winifred, stooping and looking through the fence, soon heard the college
bell jangle; she knew that it was nine o'clock, and boys and masters
were being ingathered for morning work. The college buildings in their
bare enclosure stood on the other side of the road. Winifred would have
been too shy to pass the playground while the boys were