"Meshach! Meshach!" rang the half-human cry, "Hoo! hoo! Vesty! Vesty!
Sweet! sweet! sweet! Ha, ha! See me! See me! Meshach, he! Vesty, she!
She! she! she! Hoot! hoot! ha!"
Rapidly changing her view, with her ears no less than her heart tingling
at the use of her own name, Vesta saw on the dusty wooden mantel a
common bird of a gray color, with dashes of brown and black upon his
wings, and a whitish breast, and he was greatly agitated, as if he meant
to fly upon her or upon some other intruder she could not see.
His eyes, of black pupils upon yellowish eyeballs, sparkled with nervous
activity. He flung himself into the air above her head, uttering sounds
of such mellow richness and such infinite fecundity of modulation, that
the old hovel almost burst with intoxicated song, combining gladness,
welcome, fear, defiance, superstition, horror, and epithalamium all
together, like Orpheus gone mad, and losing the continuity of his golden
notes.
The bird's upper bill was beaked like a hawk's, his lower was sharp as a
lance, and between them issued that infuriated melody and cadence and
epithet that old Patrick Henry's spirit might have migrated into from
his grave in the Virginia woods. He suddenly flung himself from his
vortex of song upon the bed of the sick man, with a twitching hop and
rapid opening and shutting of the tail, like the fan of a disturbed
beauty, and thence perched upon Milburn's peaked hat, and with a
convulsive struggle of his throat and body, as if he were in superhuman
labor, brought out, distinct as man could speak, the words,
"'Sband! 'sband! Vesty! Vesty! Sweet! sweet! Come see! come see!"
Vesta, by a quick, expert movement, grasped the bird, and smoothed it
against her bosom, and soothed its excitement.
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