lover can understand. What now was the most beguiling
of chats; what the danger of dislocating my neck; what the dread of
neighborhood wonder; what the annoyance of mosquitoes, or dogs, or small
boys, or loose cattle, or anything? There was the nest. (I am obliged to
admit, parenthetically, that nearly all these calamities befell me
during my devotion to that nest, but I never faltered in my attentions,
and I never regretted.)

At the moment of discovery, however, I was too excited to watch. First
carefully locating the tiny object by means of a dead branch,--for I
knew I should have to seek it again if I lost it then, and the luck of
finding it so easily could not fall to me twice,--I rushed to the house
to share my enthusiasm with a sympathizer.

My lady ruby-throat was a canny bird; she had selected her position with
judgment. The silver poplar of her choice was covered with knobs so
exactly copied by the nest that no one would have suspected it of being
anything different. It was on a dead branch, so that foliage could not
trouble her, while leafy twigs grew near enough for protection. No large
limb afforded rest for a human foe, and it was at the neck-breaking
height of twenty feet from the ground. Neck-breaking indeed I found it,
after a trial of twenty minutes' duration, which, judging from my
sensations, might have been a century.

[Illustration: THE NEST WITH MY LADY UPON IT--RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD]

But whether my head ever recovered its natural pose or not, I was happy;
for I saw the hummingbird shaping her snug domicile to her tidy form,
turning around and around in it, pressing with breast and bend of the
wing, as I was certain, from the similarity of her attitude and motions
to those of a robin I had closely watched at the same work. During the
time I watched her she made ten trips between the poplar and the vine,
and at every visit worked at shaping the nest and adjusting the
outside material. She did not care for my distant and inoffensive
presence on the earth below, and she probably did not suspect the power
of my glass to spy upon her secrets, for she showed no discomfiture at
my frequent visits. Indeed, she took pains to let me know that she had
her eye upon me, for twice when she left the nest she swerved from her
course to swoop down over my head, squeaking most volubly as she passed.

[Sidenote: _A CHARMING SPOT._]

While sitting at my post of observation, my neck sometimes refused to
ret