Never mind, 'possum, it's your turn all the time. If bobolink could imitate you in the art of making-believe dead, he would fare better--until folks found him out. People have little use for a dead bobolink, unless shot-gun or snare be in at the death. But bobolinks never seem to learn of 'possums or anybody else. They follow in the wake of their ancestor bobolinks, over the selfsame route to the South; dining in the selfsame rice-fields; swinging on the selfsame reed stalks, exactly as the reed stalks come up each year in the place of last season's petiole. It's a sad, pathetic tale. But wait! Spring is coming in the steps of last year's spring-time; over the selfsame route, to the selfsame end and fortunes. With the spring will return the bobolinks, as many as have survived disaster. Before you know it he will be calling himself in the meadows, exactly as he called last spring. The seasons and the birds are but echoes of themselves. Robert o' Lincoln, with his latest striped coat, will sway on the stems and wait for his sweetheart. He will flirt with neither sparrow nor thrush until she arrives. He is true, is the bobolink! So is the polecat, growing lean under his winter stump, and licking his lips at the sound of the farmer calling to his children, "The skunk-blackbird has come!" "When you can pipe in that merry old strain, Robert o' Lincoln, come back again." CHAPTER XV AT NESTING-TIME "I pray you hear my song of a nest. For it is not long." In the preceding chapters we have said little about the female or mother birds. In referring to a single individual we have used the pronoun he, as if "he" and no other were worthy of affectionate notice. As apology, we refer our readers to the title of our book, "Birds of Song and Story." As it is mostly the male who sings, and also the male who wears the more beautiful plumage, we have given him the first or greater space. It is the male who figures in myth or legend, since it is he who speaks or is known for conspicuous markings. But always, at the right season, is the wife bird or the mother bird loyal and true, sweet and modest of color and habit. It is she who "lives for a purpose"--if purpose ever moves the heart of a bird. It is she who sacrifices her own individual preferences and joys for the sake of others. It is she, mostly, who makes the family fortunes. It is she, save in a few instances, who builds the nest, and warms the eggs when once she has placed them where they ought to be.