"Bully for you!" Dick cried. "If you couldn't be born a Westerner, you are born again one. I am moved to tell you something that gave me a small glow yesterday. I met Lewis--the editor of the _Star_, you know, Madeline--and he insisted on stopping me and congratulating me on having brought Mr. Norris to St. Etienne; said he was irritated at first by having a man forced on him by influence, when there was really no particular place for him, but, he went on, 'Mr. Norris is rapidly making his own place. We think him a real acquisition.'" "Oh, pooh!" Norris lapsed sulkily into his usual quiet manner. "Of course I can write better than I can talk. My thoughts are just slow enough, I guess, to keep up with a pen." Dick laughed softly as though he were pleased at things he did not tell. Madeline, for the first time, gave her real attention to Mr. Norris, whom she had not hitherto thought worth dwelling on--at least when Dick was about. Never before had this young man talked about himself. A silence fell. "Was that a wood-thrush?" Norris asked, manifestly grasping at a change of subject. "I don't know, and I don't intend to know," Madeline cried, with such unusual viciousness that the two men stared. "Poor birds!" she said. "I've nothing against them, but I'm in rebellion against the bird fad. I'm so tired of meeting people and having them start in with a gushing, 'Oh, how-de-do! Only fancy, I have just seen a scarlet tanager!' and you know they haven't, and they wouldn't care anyway, and their mother may be dying." Ellery laughed, and Dick said: "Well, what are you going to do about it?" "I'm going to invent a fad of my own." "Let us in on the ground floor." "If you like. I'm learning the notes of the wind in the tree-tops. It has such variety! No two trees sound alike. Hear that sharp twitter of the maples? The oak has a deep sonorous song, and the elm's is as delicate as itself. I believe I could tell them all with my eyes shut." "One breeze with infinite manifestations. I suppose our souls twist the breath of the spirit to our own likenesses in the same way," Ellery said. Madeline looked at him and he smiled. "You're getting poetical, old codger," said Dick. "You must be in love." Ellery blushed, but Dick went on, oblivious of byplay. "I move that we celebrate the occasion by a cold collation. Last week, your mother kindly made inquiries about my tastes that led me to infer that everything I most affect is stowed away in that comfortable-looking basket."