Webster, in the same deliberate tone, repeated his question: "Did you ever see the Kentucky warbler?" Webster's father looked over his spectacles at Webster's mother as with the air of an appeal for guidance: "My dear, your son asks me, if I understand him, whether I have ever seen a Kentucky wooden war horse?" He was not above fun-making and it seemed to him that the occasion called for it. Webster's mother explained: "One of the professors from the University lectured to them in April about birds. His head has been full of birds ever since: I shouldn't wonder if his dreams have been full of them." She looked at Webster not without ineradicable tenderness and pride; she could not quite have explained the pride, she could have explained the tenderness. Now the truth of the matter was that since that memorable morning of the April talk at high school, she had been hearing from Webster repeatedly on that subject. He had told her of the lecture immediately upon reaching home; she had never seen him so wrought up. And from that time he had upon occasion plied her with questions: as to what she knew of birds when she lived in the country. She had to tell him that she knew very little; everybody identified the several species that preyed upon fruit and berries and young chickens; she named these readily enough. She had never heard of a bird called the Kentucky warbler. And she had never heard of Alexander Wilson. All this she had duly narrated to Webster's father--greatly to his dejection. A bank officer with a solitary son, now graduated from high school, going after bird-nests--that was a prospect before such a father! He had shaken his head in silence that more than spoke. "I told him," Webster's mother had concluded, "that the only Wilsons worth knowing in Kentucky were the horse-people Wilsons: of course we know _them_. It has been amusing to watch Elinor. Whenever Webster has begun about birds, if she has overheard him, she has made it convenient to settle somewhere near and listen. She would break in and stop his questions, but then there would be no more entertainment for her. She has been a study." Thus Webster's father was not so ill-informed as he now appeared. In return for the information from Webster's mother, apparently for the first time imparted, he looked at his son with an expression which plainly meant that as a speculation the latter was becoming a graver risk. "No, my son," he said, "I have never met your forest friend. I am merely a Kentucky bank warbler. One who did his warbling years ago. There is some _war_ left in me. I suppose there will always be _war_ left in me, but there isn't any _war_-ble. I warbled one distant solitary spring to your mother. She replied beautifully in kind and lavishly in degree. We made a nest and had a hatching. Since then the male bird has been trying--not to escape the consequences of his song--but to meet his notes like a man. I have never stumbled upon your forest friend."