“When they got him over they didn’t know what to do with him. The hospital was very quiet and still, for every one had gone to bed. They sneaked Tiny round to the back entrance and got him off the cart, and led him into a bathroom. Then they got blankets off the beds for bedding, gave him some bread and milk and cereal foods they found in the pantry, and left him till morning. Of course they all slept late, and the first person to go in the bathroom the next morning was a nurse. She shrieked wildly when she saw this pitiful black pony with his big hungry eyes and the bathroom which was a sight, for the food had brought back some of Tiny Tim’s old-time spirit, and he had knocked things about.
“The other nurses ran and doctors and soldiers came, and they just yelled with laughter. Anyway, the pony was adopted by the hospital—”
Billie interrupted me, “You don’t mean to say this story is about the soldiers’ mascot in the yard over at the hospital?”
“The same,” I said. “Tiny is now as fat as a pig, and as happy as a king. The soldiers love him, and he often goes for walks down Spadina Avenue with them. You know everybody loves soldiers, for they have been so brave in protecting their country, and they are allowed many privileges. He is too small for them to ride, and of course he is old now, but isn’t it nice that he is happy and not in that horrid old stable?”
“That is a lovely story,” said Billie. “I wish soldiers would go to New York and rescue some of the poor horses there. Now, tell me what became of the junk man?”
“Oh, the story got into the papers and the Martins felt dreadfully to think they had not discovered the condition the pony was in. They spoke to some of their rich friends and formed a company, and they are building model boarding stables for poor men’s horses, away downtown. They have good lighting and ventilation, and fine roomy stalls, and running water, and fly screens, and on top of the stables is a big roof garden for neighborhood children to play in. It is a very crowded district and the children will love this garden, and Chummysays they will be sure to eat lunches up there and it will be fine for birds too.”
“But the junk man,” said Billie. “Your talk flies all over the place, Dicky-Dick.”
I could not help laughing at her funny, impatient expression. Then I said, “The Martins got him a young, strong horse, and told him how to take care of it. It is not a charity, Billie—the stables, I mean. By taking a good many horses, the company can make money out of it.”
“Are there any horses in the old barn now?” asked Billie.
“Not for any length of time. It is to be torn down and a garage put up there.”
“Just as well,” said Billie, “but what are you staring at, Dicky-Dick?”
“At Squirrie,” I said. “He just came off the roof and went into the old barn. I hope he is not after young birds. Billie, I think I’ll go have a talk with him. I’ve been longing to get him alone for some time.”
“Better let him alone,” said Billie warningly. “He wouldn’t mind you.”
“I’m going to try,” I said, “and if you will excuse me, I’ll leave you for a little while.”
Billie shook her head, but I was determined, and, flying into the sitting room, for we were in Mrs. Martin’s bedroom, I went out through the open window and flew behind our house to the old barn.
PERCHING on the roof of the barn, I called softly, “Squirrie, Squirrie, where are you?”
For a long time he would not speak, then I heard him mocking me, “Here I am, baby, baby,” and he unexpectedly put his head out of a hole right behind me.
I turned round, and he made one of his dreadful faces at me.
“Squirrie,” I said gently, for I was determined not to lose patience with him, “come out, I want to talk to you.”
“And what have you to say that is worth listening to?” he asked teasingly, and sticking his head a little further out of the hole.
“I want to tell you how sorry I am for you,” I went on, “and to ask you if I can help you to try to be a better squirrel. The birds are getting pretty angry with you, and I fear they mayrun you out of the neighborhood if you don’t improve.”
At this bit of news he came right out, his eyes twinkling dangerously.
“What are they planning to do?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing definite. They’re just talking of what they’ll do if you tease their young ones this year, as you did last year. You remember they got very angry with you before the nesting season was over.”
He began to hum his favorite song—“I care for nobody; no, not I—”
“Squirrie,” I said pleadingly, “if you only knew how much pleasanter it is to be good and have everybody love you.”
“Just like you—little sneaking soft-face!” he said.
I was quite shocked. “I am not a sneak,” I said, “and why do you call me soft-face—I, a hard-billed bird?”
“You’re such a little drooling darling,” he said disdainfully, “making up to all the birds in the neighborhood, and pretending to be such an angel. You’re a little weasel, that’s what you are.”
“A weasel,” I exclaimed in horror, “a badanimal that sucks birds’ blood. Squirrie, you’re crazy!”
“I’m not crazy,” he said, coming quite out of the hole and sitting up on his hind legs and shaking his forepaws threateningly at me. “I see through you, Mr. Snake-in-the-grass.”
I was silent for a minute under this torrent of abuse and overwhelmed at his audacity in calling me, a tiny bird, by the names of bad animals—not that snakes are all bad, nor are weasels, but he used the bad part of them to describe me.
“Well,” I said at last, “you are taking my call in a wrong spirit.”
“Don’t I see through you!” he said fiercely. “Don’t I hear you talking me over with that imp Chummy! I’ll make him suffer for his bad talk about me. I’ll have his young ones’ blood this summer.”
“Do you think Chummy sent me to you?” I asked, in a shocked voice.
“No, I don’t,” he said roughly. “I think you came on your own sly account, you model bird trying to convert poor Squirrie and make him a smooth-faced hypocrite like yourself.”
“What do you mean by hypocrite?” I saidfuriously. “I am an honest bird. I am really sorry for you, and you know it. I would like to help you to be a better squirrel, but how can I help you, if you won’t let me?”
“You help me!” he said contemptuously. “Now what could you do, you snippy wisp of feathers and bone?”
I made a great effort to keep from losing my temper. “I could be your friend,” I said. “I could talk over your mistakes with you and advise you as to future conduct. It is a great thing to have a friend, Squirrie, one who really loves you.”
He became quite solemn and quiet in his manner. “Do I understand that you are prepared to love me?” he said.
“I am,” I said firmly. “I will be your friend and stand by you, if you will promise to try to be a better squirrel.”
“And give up Chummy?” he asked.
“Why should I give up Chummy?” I said. “He is a good, kind-hearted bird. I think he would become your friend too, if you reformed.”
“I hate Chummy,” he said.
“But don’t you understand, Squirrie,” I saidquickly, “that if you become a good little animal, instead of hating everybody, you will love everybody, and you will feel so much more comfortable. It’s dreadful to be so mad inside all the time. It eats up your strength, and your kind-heartedness.”
I thought Squirrie was impressed, for he was silent for a long time and kept his head down. Then he began to laugh, quite quietly, but at last so violently that he shook all over.
I stared at him, not knowing what to make of him.
“You little tame yellow brat,” he said at last, “do you think I want to get like you? You have no fun in life.”
“What is fun?” I asked quietly.
His eyes shone like two stars. “Making things squirm,” he said.
“But squirming means suffering,” I replied.
He patted his little stomach with his paws. “What does it matter who suffers, if my skin is whole?”
“But your mind, Squirrie,” I said impatiently. “Even squirrels have something inside that isn’t all flesh. If I make another bird angry I feel nasty inside.”
“Squirrel minds don’t count,” he said airily, “my mother told me so. She said only bodies count.”
“That’s what the matter is with you,” I exclaimed. “You are hard-hearted and care only for yourself. If you get your own way, all the other little squirrels in the world can be cold and miserable and unhappy.”
“And all the little birdies too,” he said, mimicking me, “especially little Dicky-Dick birdies; and now for your impudence to me I’m going to take such a bite out of your tail that you’ll remember till moulting time the saucy offer you made to Mr. Squirrie to change his whole plan of life at your suggestion.”
I tried to fly, but I seemed paralyzed. He was staring fixedly right into my eyes, and suddenly he made a leap over my head, caught my tail in his mouth, and tore out every feather.
I thought he was going to kill me, and I screamed wildly, “Chummy, Chummy, help me! Help me!”
Dear old Chummy, whom I had seen down on the ground, examining the scrapings from my cage that Mrs. Martin always threw out thewindow to him, heard me and flew swiftly up. He gave his battle cry and in an instant the air was thick with sparrows, who were all about the roofs examining nesting sites.
However, by this time Squirrie was gone. I had one last glimpse of him as he looked over his shoulder, before he scampered along the ridge pole of the barn to a near-by tree and from it to our house top, then along the roofs to his own house and into his little fortress. Across his mouth was the bunch of my tail feathers. He would probably line his nest with them. I could not move, and sat trembling and crouching on the ridgepole.
“Tell me, tell me what has happened?” said Chummy. “Oh, Dicky-Dick, your tail is gone—what a dreadful thing! You, there, stop laughing,” and he made a dash at a giddy young sparrow of last season, called Tommy, who was nearly killing himself giggling over my funny appearance.
“It was Squirrie,” I said in a gasping way. “I was trying to do him good, and he bit off my tail.”
“Why didn’t you consult me?” said Chummygravely. “That animal has heard enough sermons to convert a whole street full of squirrels. They just roll off him like gravel from the roof.”
“I thought I might influence him,” I said, “if I got him alone and talked kindly to him, but I didn’t do him a bit of good, and I have lost my pretty tail.”
Chummy shook his head sadly. “It is too bad, Dicky-Dick. I wouldn’t have had this happen for a pound of hemp seed.”
“I never am pretty,” I said miserably, “even with all my feathers; but my tail was passable. I shall be a fright now, and Missie was just going to get a mate for me. A proud little hen bird will despise me. Oh, why didn’t I stay at home!”
“Never mind, Dicky-Dick,” said Chummy consolingly. “You meant well, but it is always a dangerous thing to meddle with old offenders. Punishment is the only thing that counts with them, and I’ll see that Squirrie gets it.”
“Don’t do anything on my account,” I said quickly. “I forgive him.”
“So do I,” said Chummy grimly. “I forgivehim so heartily that I am going to make an earnest effort to reform him myself.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked anxiously.
He smiled his funny little sparrow smile. “Wait and see—I will just tell you this much: I am going to pass him on to a higher court than ours.”
I did not know what he meant, but I listened eagerly as he said to some of the older sparrows who, seeing that he was looking after me, were leaving the roof and going back to their various occupations, “Friends, I am going up to North Hill. Just keep an eye on the grackles, will you? They are showing a liking for the trees in this neighborhood, and we don’t want them too near. If they bother you, call for help from Susan and Slow-Boy and drive them away. Don’t go too near them, just swarm at them and squawk loudly. They hate fussing from other birds, though they do enough of it themselves, gracious knows.”
Then he turned to me. “Shall I fly beside you, down to your window, Dicky-Dick? You had better go in and have a rest.”
“If you please, Chummy,” I said weakly. “I don’t know when anything has upset me like this.”
“You have lost some blood,” he said. “Those little feathers of yours must have been deeply rooted.”
He flew beside me quite kindly, till I got to my window. On arriving there, I begged him to come inside and have a little lunch before setting out on his long fly up to North Hill.
He was delighted to do this, especially as we found in my cage a good-sized piece of corn bread that Hester had just baked and Mrs. Martin had put in for me.
In his joy at finding it Chummy confided to me that the object of his journey was to find old King Crow and talk over Squirrie’s case with him.
“And who is King Crow?” I asked.
“He rules over all the crows in this middle part of Toronto, and in the North. He is very wise and has a great deal of influence. We sparrows hate the grackles, but like the crows, who often are of great assistance to us.”
“Chummy,” I said, “I feel badly at bringing this on Squirrie.”
“You are sincere in wishing Squirrie well, are you not?”
“Oh, yes, from the bottom of my heart I wish him to become a good squirrel.”
“And you didn’t succeed in making an impression on him. Now, why not hand him over to some one who has influence over him?”
“Very well,” I said sadly. “I suppose I had no business to interfere, but I meant well.”
Chummy smiled. “I have often heard that before. You see, Dicky-Dick, if all the kind birds and animals in this neighborhood who have tried to help Squirrie reform could not do it, how could you, a little weak stranger, coming in, hope to succeed?”
“That’s true,” I said. “Well, Chummy, I hope you will have a successful fly. You have a wise little head on your small sparrow shoulders.”
Chummy was poising himself on the window ledge by this time, preparatory to leaving me.
“There is a man in an airplane,” he said, looking up in the sky. “I’ll have a race with him to North Hill.”
I watched them starting out—the great whirring machine, and the tiny silent sparrow.
Chummy was ahead when I went back to my cage to have a rest. I wondered very much what Chummy would do, and impatiently awaited his return.
WHILE I sat dozing in my cage a yelp from Billie wakened me, and I flew to the window where she stood on her chair barking at something in the street.
Mrs. Martin stood out on the sidewalk showing something under her coat to the lodging house landlady.
“Missie has something alive there,” said Billie; “I know it. She is bringing it in.”
“Well,” I said a little crossly, “why make such a fuss and wake me out of what was going to be a nice nap?”
Billie was trembling in every limb. “It’s something strange, Dicky-Dick. I can’t tell you how I feel.”
“Probably it’s a new dog,” I said. “Some one is always giving Missie one.”
“It’s no dog,” said Billie; “it’s no dog. Oh,I feel so queer! Something peculiar is going to happen.”
I stared at her curiously. Billie is a very sensitive creature. Then I listened for Missie to come in.
Presently the door opened. “Well, my pets,” said Mrs. Martin heartily, “what do you think your Missie has brought you now?”
Billie looked terribly, but she ran to her dear mistress and fawned on her, casting meanwhile very nervous looks at the bulge in her coat.
“A present for you, Billie,” said Mrs. Martin, “a dear companion. I hope you will like her,” and opening her coat, she set on the floor an apparently nice little monkey.
Billie gave a gasp and the monkey a squeal. They knew each other. Even Mrs. Martin saw this. “Why, Billie!” she exclaimed. Then she watched the monkey running up to Billie, putting her arms round her, jabbering and acting like a child that has found its mother.
Billie did not like it, I saw, but she stood firm. “Where have you known each other?” said Mrs. Martin. Then with a touching and almost comical earnestness, she said, “Oh, why can I for once not understand all that my petsare saying? Billie, you are telling Dicky-Dick something, I know by the way he puts his little head on one side, but, Dicky, whatever have you done with your tail? Mary, oh, Mary, come here!”
Our dear Mary came hopping to the room.
“Look at our Dicky-Dick,” said her mother. “Our little pet has lost his tail. What can this mean?”
Our Mary was puzzled. “No cat could get at him,” she said; “he is too smart to be caught. It must have been another bird.”
“Oh, why can’t we understand?” said Mrs. Martin intensely, and she stared hard at Billie. “Tell me, my dog, how did our Dicky lose his tail.”
Billie, put on her mettle, ran to the window, looked out at the trees and barked wildly.
Our Mary spoke quickly. “That is the way Billie acts when she chases the red squirrel in the Tyrells’ lodging house. He is the only creature in the neighborhood that she chases, so she knows as well as we do that he is very naughty.”
“Billie,” said Mrs. Martin earnestly, “did the red squirrel pull Dicky-Dick’s tail out?”
“Bow, wow, wow!” barked Billie, raising her forelegs from the ground as she spoke. “Oh, bow, wow, wow!”
Mrs. Martin looked very much disturbed. “Then that seals his doom. I have heard that he has done a great deal of damage to the woodwork in Mrs. Tyrell’s house. We will take measures to have him disposed of, if she is willing. Now, to come back to the monkey—by the way, where is she?”
“Unraveling your sock, under the table,” said our Mary, with a laugh, and, sure enough, there sat Mrs. Monkey with a heap of wool on the floor beside her.
Mrs. Martin swooped down on her. “Would you have believed it! Three hours’ work undone in three minutes! I should have watched her. Now, to come back to Billie—my dog, you have not known any monkeys since you came to me. You must have been acquainted with this one before I got you. Perhaps you belonged to some Italians in the Bronx neighborhood, and one of them owned a little monkey.”
I could not help interposing an excited little song here, for that was just what Billie wastelling me and what the monkey was jabbering about. Angelina and Antonio, who owned Billie, had an uncle Tomaso who was an organ-grinder. He used to visit them and bring his monkey, and the little creature became acquainted with Billie.
“And now let me tell you, Billie, my share in this,” said Mrs. Martin. “A week ago I was going along College Street where an organ-grinder was droning out ‘Spring, Gentle Spring,’ and his monkey was collecting cents, when an automobile skidded and struck the poor man. He was taken to the General Hospital near by, and I took the monkey to the Humane Society on McCaul Street. I have visited the man since and taken him delicacies, and last night he died. He had no friends here, and as a token of gratitude he gave me his monkey. I have brought it to you, Billie, for a playmate, but it is only a trial trip, and if you and monkey don’t get on, I will take her to the Riverdale Zoo.”
Billie’s eyes grew dull; she shook her head nervously, and tried not to groan. Nella, the monkey, was squeezing her so tightly round the waist that she was nearly frantic. “Sister, sister,”the monkey was saying, “Nella is glad to see you. She has been so lonely.”
“Billie, Billie,” I sang, “be kind, be kind; monkeys have rights, monkeys have rights.”
“She has no right to squeeze the life out of me and tickle me,” squealed Billie. “I never liked her. She is queer. I like dogs and birds.”
“Be good, be good,” I sang encouragingly.
“And you be careful,” said Billie irritably. “She would kill you in an instant if she got her paws on you. You don’t know monkeys. They’re not civilized like dogs.”
Fresh from my adventure with the squirrel, I felt a bit cautious. “What shall I do, Billie?” I sang. “What shall I do, do, do?”
“Fly upstairs to the bird-room,” said Billie, who, in the midst of all her nervousness, was taking thought for me, “and stay there till Nella goes. She is very mischievous. You’ll see that Missie can’t keep her.”
“Could I stay here if I kept in my cage?” I asked.
“No, no!” barked Billie impatiently. “You just ought to see her climb. She would swarm up those picture frames and leap to your cage,and have her fingers on your throat in no time. Fly upstairs, I tell you. Fly quickly, before Mrs. Martin goes out of the room.”
“I fly, I fly,” I sang, and when Mrs. Martin opened the door to go and get some fruit for Mrs. Monkey I dashed upstairs and sat on the electrolier in the upper hall till our Mary came along and opened the bird-room door for me.
Such a chattering and gabbling arose among the canaries on my entrance! “Why, look at Dicky-Dick! Where’s your tail, Dicky? Surely he has had a bad fight with some bird, or was it an accident? Tell us, Dicky; tell us, tell, tell.”
Even the parakeets and the gentle indigo birds and nonpareils called out to me, “Speak, speak quick! Who hurt you?”
Not since I left the bird-room and took up my quarters downstairs had I been so glad to get back to it. Many of these birds were my relatives. They might tease me, and there might be jealousies between us, but they were my own kind, and they would never, never treat me as a squirrel would, or a monkey. So I told them the whole story.
They all put their heads on one side and listened,and it was amusing to hear what they said when I had finished my tale of woe. This was the substance of it, “Better stay home, better stay home; the world is bad, is bad to birds, bad, bad, bad.”
“But the bird-room life seems narrow to me,” I said. “You don’t know how narrow it is till you get out of it.”
Green-Top had been looking at me quite kindly till I said this, when he called out, “He’s making fun of us, making fun, fun, fun.”
Norfolk, my father, began to bristle up at this, so did my cousins and my young brothers, Pretty-Boy and Cresto and Redgold. They seemed to take my remarks more to heart than the birds that weren’t related to me.
My uncle Silver-Throat, however, slipped up to me and whispered, “You talk too much. Hold your tongue,” and fortunately just at this moment our Mary, who had been filling seed dishes, created a sensation that turned their thoughts from me.
“Birdies,” she said, “western New York is sending us a lovely warm breeze over old Lake Ontario. I think we can celebrate this warmday by opening the screen into our new flying cage.”
What an excitement that made! The birds all twittered and chattered, and flew round her, as she went to the big window and, unhooking the wire screen, allowed us to go out to the sun-flooded roof.
Despite my tailless condition, I was the first out and got a good rap from my father for it, for as the oldest inhabitant of the bird-room, he should have taken precedence of every one.
My uncle, who followed me, was laughing. “You are a gentle bird, Dicky-Dick, but you will have trouble as long as you live. All birds of your class do.”
“What is my class?” I asked.
“Explorers, adventurers, rovers, birds who will not stay at home and rest in the parental nest. They flutter their wings and fly, and a hawk is always hovering in the sky.”
“I have lots of fun,” I said.
“No doubt, but take care that you do not lose your life.”
“Excuse me, dear uncle,” I said, “there is myfriend, Chummy Hole-in-the-Wall, he has important news for me.”
“Don’t you think, as you are away from your family so much, that it would be polite to stay with them a little while, and let those outsiders alone?”
“I will come back to them,” I said; “I must see Chummy now, I must, I must,” and, singing vivaciously, I flew to a corner where Chummy was perched on the wire netting, looking down at us.
“What news, what news?” I sang.
“Great news,” he chirped; “but what a fine place this is for the birds! Almost as good as having the whole street. It is lovely to see them out.”
“You would not like it,” I said, “nor would I; but they do.”
“Like it,” he said, with a shudder, “I should go wild if I were confined like this; but to canaries it must seem enormous. See how excitedly they are flying about.”
“Tell me about Great King Crow,” I said.
Chummy smiled. “I found him sitting on a big pine tree. He had been holding court, butit was over. Down below him on the ground was a dead young crow.”
“Had he killed it?” I asked, in a shocked voice.
“Oh, no, but he had ordered it killed.”
“What had it done?”
“Would not do sentry go.”
“What is that?”
“While crows are feeding, one of their number is always supposed to watch from the top of a high tree and warn if danger approaches. This young crowling was greedy and always wanted to eat. They warned him, but he would not obey; then they killed him.”
“And what did the Great King say about Squirrie?”
“He will see the head of Squirrie’s clan to-morrow morning—the Big Red Squirrel—and they will decide what to do.”
“Why did you not go to see the Big Red Squirrel yourself?” I asked.
“I was afraid to. I fear squirrels as a class, though there are many single ones that I like—Chickari, for example, who never hurt a sparrow in his life.”
THE next morning the Big Red Squirrel sent down two squirrel policemen, and you may be sure every English sparrow on the street, and the robins, grackles, and wild sparrows were all on tiptoe.
I heard Chummy’s call for me, “T-check, t-chack, Dicky O! T-check, t-chack, Dicky O!” and I flew out of the bird-room with all speed, out to our favorite elm tree. There were the two squirrel policemen, old sober fellows, climbing on the roof of the lodging house and going straight to Squirrie’s front door hole which a dozen young sparrows were eager to show them.
“Oh, Chummy,” I said, standing with my tailless back against the tree trunk, “they won’t kill him, will they?”
“I don’t know,” he said gravely. “I can’ttell what they were told to do, but I guess that they are going to drive him up to North Hill and let him plead his own case before the Big Red Squirrel.”
I shuddered. This was very painful to me, and I wished I had said nothing about my adventure.
“I know what is passing in your canary mind,” said Chummy, “and, Dicky-Dick, do not be troubled. Squirrie had to be dealt with. Your affair only hurried things a little—see, here he comes. They have had a tussle with him. There is blood on one ear.”
Suddenly we heard voices below us on the sidewalk. “Oh the darling little squirrie babies, taking a walk in the sunshine!” and, looking down, we saw Sammy-Sam and his sister Lucy-Loo standing with their fresh young faces turned up to us.
Chummy, who was very fond of children, said softly, “Bless their little hearts, how they misunderstand birds and beasts! Those two serious old squirrels taking a scamp off, perhaps to bite him to death, they think is a bit of fun.”
“What dreadful faces he is making!” I said.
Squirrie, seeing all the birds assembled to stare at him, was in such a fury that he looked as if he would like to kill us all. Every few minutes he halted and tried to run back to his hole.
Whenever he did this, the two old ones closed in on him, and urged him on. They went leaping from branch to branch, till we lost sight of them up the old elm-shaded street.
No one went near Squirrie’s hole. The old policemen squirrels had left word that no bird was to enter it. The Big Red Squirrel had heard that it was an excellent home for a squirrel and he was going to send down another one of the clan, and, sure enough, late in the afternoon, didn’t the beloved Chickari with a brand-new mate come loping down the street.
The birds all gathered round him, to hear news of Squirrie. “Was he dead?”
“No,” he said, he had been let out on parole. He was to keep near the Big Red Squirrel’s own private wood on a gentleman’s estate, and if he did one single bad thing he was to be killed.
“How did he look when he was brought up before the squirrel court?” asked Chummy.
“Very saucy at first,” said Chickari, “and made faces, but—”
“Well, what happened?” asked Chummy.
“I don’t like to tell you,” said Chickari, looking about at the young sparrows listening with their beaks open.
“Go on,” said Chummy sternly. “These are rebellious times. It won’t hurt these young fellows to learn how bad birds and beasts are dealt with.”
“The policemen laid his shoulder open with their teeth,” said Chickari unwillingly, “but a little blood-letting is cooling, and it stopped his mischief and made him beg humbly for pardon.”
“Well,” said Chummy, speaking for us all, “we hope he may become a better squirrel, but we also hope that his squirrelship, the judge of all the clan, will never send that bad creature down here again.”
“He’ll never come here while I live,” said Chickari gayly, “for I told the Big Red Squirrel that I just loved this neighborhood and would bring up my young ones so carefully that if they dared to suck a bird’s egg or kill a young one I’d bite their ears off.”
Chickari’s face as he said this was so ferocious, and at the same time so comical, that we all burst out laughing at him.
Our laughter was checked by pitiful squeals from our house, four doors down, and we all stared that way.
Our Billie was running down the sidewalk with something dark and hairy on her back. Like a yellow and white streak she raced in by the boarding house, which was set back from the street, and dashed into a little shrubbery behind it.
I flew after her as well as I could in my tailless condition. Some persons do not know that even the loss of one feather makes a difference in a bird’s flight.
The shrubs had scratched the monkey off and, jabbering excitedly at Billie, she stood threatening her, till seeing Black Thomas coming, she ran nimbly down the street to our house.
Black Thomas was mewing angrily at Billie, “And what are you doing in my yard—haven’t you one of your own?”
“Oh, let me alone, cat,” said Billie wearily. “I’m only resting a bit. I’m dead tired.”
Black Thomas snarled a trifle; then, seeingher friend the cook at the back door, he went to her.
“Too much monkey, eh, Billie?” I said.
She just burst into dog talk. “I’m nearly crazy, Dicky-Dick. I don’t know what I’ll do. Every minute that thing persecutes me. She sleeps in my box with me and kicks me to death. She is always creeping up to me and putting her arm round me, and it tickles me—and I’m tired of giving her rides. I’m not a pony. I’m a dog. I hate any one to love me so hard. I wish she’d hate me.”
“She’s cold, Billie, and she is lonely.”
“She’s got a little coat. Mrs. Martin made her one. She won’t keep it on. She tries to put it on me.”
By this time I was sitting on a low branch just above Billie’s head. “Be patient, dear dog friend. In amusing the monkey, you are helping our Missie.”
“And she’s so bad,” said Billie, “she’s stolen all the cake for to-night’s knitting party. She got into the sideboard after lunch and Missie doesn’t know it, and I caught her yesterday in the basement fussing with the box that the electric light man goes to. I don’t believe any ofthe lights will go on to-night. The front door bell hasn’t rung all day, and no one knows but me that it’s the monkey that put it out of order.”
“It’s too bad,” I said, “and beside all this wickedness on her part, she’s keeping me a prisoner in the bird-room. I managed to fly out this morning when our Mary had the door open, but I don’t know when I’ll get back. I just had to come out to get news of Squirrie.”
Billie, while listening to me, was staring gloomily about the shrubbery. Suddenly she got up and nosed something lying on the ground. “What’s this, Dicky-Dick?” she asked.
“Betsy, a rag doll belonging to Beatrice.”
“I wonder if it would be any harm to take it?” she said wistfully.
“I don’t think so. I saw Beatrice throw it there the other day, and she said she was tired of playing with it.”
“I might take it for the monkey,” said Billie, with such a funny face that I burst out laughing at her.
With a roll of her eyes at me, she seized it in her mouth and went trotting home with it.
I flew along with her. I had to get back into the bird-room, for I did not dare to stay downstairs while that bad monkey was about.
Now, as we reached the house a very strange thing happened. It seems that Mrs. Martin had not understood my going back to the bird-room. She thought that I might be seeking a little playmate there, being disappointed that she had not got me one.
Wishing to keep me downstairs, she had hurriedly gone next door and bought the little lonely canary Daisy from the lodging house lady.
There she was, our dear Missie, walking along with the cage in her hand, and at first, forgetting about the monkey, I was overjoyed.
I flew right to her. “Daisy! Daisy!” I cried in delight, as I stared down at the pretty little creature inside the cage who was tremblingly looking up at me. She knew me, but she was frightened of the street and the noises.
“Why, Dicky, you are talking!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “Say that again, my pretty one.”
“Oh, Daisy! Daisy!” I sang. “Daisy! Daisy! Daisy—y—y!”
Billie dropped her doll and stared at me. Now she believed that canaries can talk. Presently she barked warningly. Nella was running out of the house.
“Take care, take care,” she called; “Nella will hurt your Daisy.”
I was in despair. I clung to the top of the cage as Mrs. Martin carried it in the house and gave my fright cry, “Mary, Mary, I’m scary, scary,” and our Mary at once came hurrying downstairs.
“Mother,” she said, “there’s something the matter with Dicky-Dick. I wonder whether he got a shock when the squirrel pulled his tail out?”
Mrs. Martin had put Daisy’s cage on a table in the library which was close to the front door, and they gazed first at me as I sat crying on the top of it, and then at Billie, who was laying her doll at Nella’s feet.
Nella took it up, looked it over, then gave it a toss in the corner.
Billie gazed despairingly at her. Nella would rather play with dogs than dolls.
“There’s something the matter with Billie, too,” said Mrs. Martin. “I suppose of courseit’s the monkey. Billie, dear, you don’t like Nella.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” barked Billie. “I don’t like her. I hate her.”
“I thought so,” said Mrs. Martin. “Now talk to me some more about her. She teases you, doesn’t she?”
“Oh, wow, wow, wow!” sobbed Billie; “she worries my life out of me.”
Mrs. Martin turned to me, “And you, Dicky-Dick, friend of Billie, you don’t like Nella.”
“I’m scary, scary,” I sang, “and Daisy is scary, scary.”
“I don’t know much about monkeys,” said Mrs. Martin, “but this one seemed very gentle and kind to me, and her owner said she was used to birds and dogs. Come here, Nella.”
The monkey jumped on her lap and began fingering the buttons on her dress.
“Let me hear your side of the story,” said Mrs. Martin. “Do you like this dog and bird?”
Nella began a long story, jabbered out in such a funny way. Billie and I understood it, but Mrs. Martin got only an inkling of it. Nella told of her life in a forest, when she wasa baby monkey, and how cruel men snatched her away from her parents, and she would now like some monkey society. She did not care much for dogs, but had to play with Billie because there was no animal of her own kind to amuse her.
When she finished, Mrs. Martin and our Mary looked at each other. They had got the drift of it.
“Down at Riverdale,” said Mrs. Martin, “is a fine monkey house, with little healthy animals just like yourself. They have a good time playing in big rooms which are well warmed, then they run out a small door to a yard and romp in the snow. When they get cold, they hurry inside, and sprawl flat on the radiators. I will send you there, and I think you will be happier with your own kind.”
Nella’s face beamed, then she did such a pretty thing. Blinking her queer yellowish eyes affectionately at Mrs. Martin, she threw her two skinny arms round her arm and hugged it. She was very happy to go to the monkey house.
“Mary, please telephone for a taxi,” saidMissie, while Billie and I exchanged a look of deep content.
Then Daisy was taken up into a vacant room in the attic, and I was shut in a big cage with her until the monkey went away. After that, Mrs. Martin said we should both go downstairs.
AS time went by, Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo became great friends with the children in the boarding house. Sometimes they quarreled, but always they made up, and we birds all noticed that the strange children were becoming almost as good to us as our own dear children were.
One day when it was warm and pleasant Sammy-Sam sat out on the doorstep trying to learn his spelling lesson for the next morning.
He didn’t look very pleasant about it, and he was not helped by having his arm round a neighbor’s dog who looked exactly like Billie and who had come to call on her.
Billie was out, and Sammy-Sam was amusing Patsy when Freddie came running out of the boarding house.
“Listen, Sammy,” he said, “to some poetryI’ve been making about the sparrow who lives in the hole in the wall.”
Sammy-Sam, glad of an excuse to throw down his book, said, “Go ahead.”
Freddie began to read very proudly,
“There was a little bird that lived in a holeNot much bigger than an ordinary bowl,And when it was tired of sitting on its nestIt would flutter, flutter out and have a little rest.Now I must end my pretty little song,You can’t be bored, for it isn’t very long.”
“There was a little bird that lived in a hole
Not much bigger than an ordinary bowl,
And when it was tired of sitting on its nest
It would flutter, flutter out and have a little rest.
Now I must end my pretty little song,
You can’t be bored, for it isn’t very long.”
“Fine!” said Sammy-Sam, clapping his hands, while I glanced at Chummy, who was sitting listening to it with a very happy sparrow face.
“Good boy,” said Chummy, in a bird whisper. Then he said briskly, “But I have no time to listen to soft words, for I must help Jennie with the nest-building.”
Jennie came along at this minute, such a pretty, dusky, smart little sparrow and very businesslike. She gave Chummy a reproachful glance, as she flew by with her beak full of tiny lengths of white soft twine that she had found outside the flying cage on our roof. She thought we were wasting time.
“And I will go and help with my nest in the big new cage on the sitting-room wall,” I said. “Daisy is turning out to be a fine nest builder. I can’t coax her away from it.”
The windows were all open to the lovely warm air, so I could make a bee-line for my nest. Oh, what a comfort little Daisy was, and is, to me! She is the sweetest, most companionable, gentle little canary I ever saw, and she never makes fun of me as the bird-room canaries do. She thinks whatever I do is just perfect, and she never grumbles if I go to have a little fly outside and am late coming home.
“How are you getting on, dearie, dearie?” I sang, as I found her working away at a heap of nest lining that Mrs. Martin had given us.
“Nicely, nicely,” she said, in her funny, husky little voice. She has been allowed to hang near a cold window in winter, and it has hurt her throat. In summer, she was nearly baked by being kept all the time in the sun, and I tell her she must be a very tough little canary, or she would have been dead before this.
“If you would just whistle a pretty little tune to me, Dicky-Dick,” she said, “while I work, and not interfere; I know just how these tiny,soft bits of cotton go. I must throw out that red stuff; I don’t like bright colors for any nest of mine.”
“Mrs. Martin never put that in,” I said. “It must have been the children. You might put it in the middle of the nest where no strange bird would see it.”
“And suppose it is hot, and I sweat,” she said, “and get the young ones all damp?”
“I don’t think you will perspire, Daisy,” I said. “You are such a cool little bird. I will sing you ‘By a Nice Stream of Water a Canary Bird Sat.’”
“Thank you,” she said, and I, perching on the top of the cage, was beginning one of my best strains, with fine long notes in it, when I heard a well-known footstep in the hall.
It was Mr. Martin coming home in the middle of the morning. What could be the matter with him?
His wife came hurrying out of the bedroom. “Henry, are you ill?”
“No,” he said wearily, passing his hand over his forehead, “but I saw this in the street, and bought it for you,” and he handed her a cardboard box.
Missie opened it, and in the box sat a dear little ring-dove, of a pale, dull, creamy color, and with a black half ring round the nape of the neck.
“Oh, Henry,” she said, “where did you get it?”
“From a man in the street. He had two to sell and one was dying. I took it into a drug store and had it put out of its misery and brought this one home to you.”
“You gentle thing!” said Missie, and, lifting the little creature out of the box, she set hemp seed and water before it.
The dove ate and drank greedily, then finding a place in the sun on the table, flew to it and began cleaning her feathers.
“She is used to strangers,” said Mr. Martin. “She has no fear of us.”
“Henry, you were glad of an excuse to come home,” said Mrs. Martin. “You are tired.”
“A trifle,” he said.
“Have you been losing money?” asked his wife.
“A trifle,” he said again, and this time he smiled.
“These hard times, I suppose,” she said, “and worry.”
He nodded.
“Mary!” she called. “Mary, come here, dear.”
Our Mary came out of her mother’s bedroom with a handful of letters in her hand.
“Tell your father our little secret,” said her mother. “This is a time he wants cheering.”
“I’m earning money,” said our Mary sweetly and with such a happy face.
Mr. Martin’s face lighted up. He was very, very fond of his only child, but we all knew that he was sorry she could not do things that other girls did. “You do not need to do that, child,” he said.
“Out of my birds,” she said with a gay laugh, “those birds that you so kindly provide for, but which I know are a great expense to you in these hard times.”
“Oh, do hurry and tell him, child,” said Mrs. Martin, who was often, in spite of her age and size, just like a girl herself. “Henry, she is earning forty dollars a week by her bird study articles. You know that many people are tryingto understand the hidden life of birds and beasts, and Mary is on the track of some wonderful discoveries.”
“Aided a good deal by her mother,” said Mary. “It is really a partnership affair, my father, but I want you to know, because I have thought that perhaps you thought and perhaps our friends thought I ought to give up my birds since times are bearing so heavily on us.”
“But,” said Mrs. Martin triumphantly, “instead of being a burden, the child is earning money, and she is also doing something patriotic in starting a new breed of canary.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Martin, “and what is that breed?”
“The Canadian canary, father,” said our Mary; “you know there has been a canary for nearly every nation, including the American, but no distinctive Canadian bird, so by crossbreeding I am trying to start one.”
“Good! Splendid!” cried Mr. Martin, deeply gratified. “I should like to have my young daughter’s name linked with some original work.”
“‘Martin’s Canadian Canary’ is already beginning to be known,” said Mrs. Martin. “Itis not a bird to be kept in tiny cages. It is for aviaries or large cages, and it is trained to fly freely in and out of its home. Canaries in the past have not had enough liberty—but, my dearest husband, have you put the new bird in your pocket?”
The dove had vanished—that is, to human eyes, and Daisy and I laughed, not in our sleeves but in our wings, for a while, before we enlightened them.
Dovey was tired and had stepped into one of the numerous knitting bags with which the house was adorned, for Mrs. Martin, so active and running all over the house, kept a bag with knitting in it in each room.
The bag seemed like a nest to dovey, and she had gone to sleep.
The Martins looked all over the room for her, and in the bedroom, but did not find her till I perched on the bag and began to sing.
How they laughed! “I’m going to call this dove Sister Susie,” said Mrs. Martin, “for I see she is going to do good work for soldiers.”
“Well,” said Mr. Martin, “I must go back to town. I feel like a different man. Somehowor other, this news about Mary has cheered me immensely.”
“Forty dollars a week, forty a week,” said Mrs. Martin, “and we wish no more money for the bird-room.”
“It isn’t the money altogether,” said Mr. Martin.
“Oh, I know, I know,” said Mrs. Martin, with a playful tap on his arm. “I understand you, Henry, and that is the best thing in the world—to be understood and sympathized with. Don’t work too hard and come home early, and we will do some digging in our garden.”
He kissed her and our Mary and hurried away. We turned our attention to Sister Susie, who, refreshed by her nap, was cooing and bowing very prettily to Mrs. Martin.
Such tricks as she played later on, on our good Missie! One day, when Mrs. Martin was presiding at a Red Cross meeting and begging ladies to give more money for wounded soldiers, she was first amazed, then overcome with laughter, to hear “Coo, oo-ooo—” coming from the knitting bag that she had brought in and put on the table before her.
Sister Susie thought all knitting bags were nests, and went into them and often laid eggs there. Mrs. Martin was trying to get a mate for her, but had not yet succeeded, so Daisy and I had her eggs boiled, and found them very good eating.
Sister Susie collected lots of money for the soldiers. When she cooed, that day at the meeting, Mrs. Martin lifted her out and put her beside the money box. She bowed and murmured so gently and coaxingly beside it that she charmed the money right out of the ladies’ pockets. That gave Missie the idea of taking her to the meetings, and finally she had a little box made in the shape of a dove, and Susie would stand beside it, and peck it, and coo, and ladies would fill it with money.
“Does Susie think it is a dove?” Billie asked me one day.
“Oh, no, she knows what it is; but doves like fun, as well as other birds, and it amuses her to beat it. One day she played a fine trick on Missie. She stepped in a knitting bag and went to sleep and Missie put it on her arm and went downtown. She noticed that the girl in a department store, who waited on her, looked queerly at her bag, and bye and bye she asked Missie if she was not afraid her pet would fly away.
“Mrs. Martin looked round, and there was Sister Susie with her head sticking out of the hole in her Red Cross bag.
“She took her out and set her on the palm of her hand. ‘You won’t leave me, will you, Susie?’ she said. ‘You want to stay with me, don’t you?’
“You see, she always had to ask questions that Susie could say ‘Yes’ to, for the bird did not know how to say ‘No.’
“‘Coo-ooo, oo,’ said Susie, a great many times and bowing very low and very politely.
“The girl was so delighted that she squealed with laughter, and other girls came to see what was amusing her. Mrs. Martin went on talking and Susie cooed so sweetly that there was soon a crowd round them.
“Missie asked her if she liked the store, and if she thought the people who came shopping could not afford to do a little more for Red Cross work.
“Susie was charmed to receive so much attention and the enthusiasm of the shoppers was so great that a manager came out of an office to see what the excitement was about. He asked if Missie would sell her bird for him to put in a cage to please the shoppers.
“Missie wheeled round to a woman who wascarrying a baby and asked her if she would sell it.
“‘Not for a thousand dollars,’ she said. ‘My baby loves me.’
“‘And my bird loves me,’ said Mrs. Martin, ‘and I would not sell her for a thousand dollars, though I thank you, Mr. Manager, for your offer.’
“‘What theater do you exhibit her in?’ asked one of the women.
“That gave Missie a chance to tell them that she was not a bird-trainer. She was just a friend to birds and allowed them to develop along their own lines.
“The woman said that her husband had once been in the business and had exhibited trained dogs and horses, but she had made him give it up, when she discovered that his animals were all dull and dispirited, and that he educated them by means of sharp nails between his fingers that he pressed into them when he was pretending to stroke them.
“‘I caught him one day pulling out the teeth of a pony,’ she said, ‘because the pony bit him, and I tell you I gave him a tongue-lashing—and I threw out a can of paint that he used tocover the sores on his animals’ backs. “Let the public see the sores, me man,” I said, “and it’s good-bye to me if you don’t give up every one of those poor creatures. If I’d known you were in such a dirty business I’d never have married you.” So he said he’d keep me, being as I was the choicest and trickiest animal he had, and the best kicker, and I bet you I soon sent that lot of animals flying to good homes in the country, and I got him a position as policeman, going to His Worship the Mayor me own self an’ tellin’ a straight story to him that I said is the father of the city.’
“Susie liked this woman and made a great many direct bows to her which pleased her very much.
“‘God bless the little angel-faced creetur,’ she said. ‘She reminds me of me own mother in glory—well, good-bye to ye, me lady, an’ good luck to the bird. I must hurry home an’ make a toothsome dish for me old man’s dinner, for it’s bound to please him, I am, since he gave up his beasts to please me.’
“When she left, the floor-walker gently urged the other women to pass on and let Mrs. Martin finish her shopping, so she put Sister Susiein the bag she so loved to travel in and went on with her purchases.”
“Some animals have a dreadful time when they travel,” said Billie. “When Missie brought me from New York I heard some cattle talking on the train. One handsome black and white mother cow was saying, ‘My blood runs like poison in my veins, for I have been three days without food or water. If human beings wanted to kill me, why did they not do it away back in Chicago, where I was taken from my baby calf? I pity the human being that eats me! Another bad, black cow said, ‘My tongue is dry and I have lost so much blood by getting bruised and torn in this crowded cattle car that I hope the persons who eat me will die.’”
“If human beings could listen to animals talking,” I said, “they would get some hints.”
“Mrs. Martin understands,” said Billie. “She told me that when our train was standing in the station in Albany the waiter in the dining car brought her two mutton chops. Just as she was going to eat them she looked out the car window, and there out on the platform in acrate were two sheep. Fancy, Dicky-Dick—two sheep from a western plain in a case half boarded up in a rushing railway station. Mrs. Martin says they looked at her with their suffering eyes. They never stirred—just showed their agony by their glances, and she pushed away her plate and said to the waiter, ‘Oh, take it away.’”
“Dear Missie,” said Billie affectionately, “she hates to see anything suffer. She saw a poor old horse fall down here in the street to-day, and she went out and gave the owner money enough to take him to the Rest Home for horses.”
“What is that?” I said curiously. “I have not heard about it.”
“I heard the milkman’s horse talking to the grocer’s horse about it two days ago,” said Billie. “It has just been started, and it is a big farm outside the city. The milkman’s horse said to the other horse, ‘You ought to go out there, Tom. Your hoofs are in bad shape, and that moist land down by the creek on the Rest Farm would set you up again finely. Then you could lie down in the shade of the tall trees,and if you were not able to go out at all they would put you in one of the nice clean barns.”
“Will they take tired dogs and birds out there?” I asked.
“They will take anything,” replied Billie. “Back of the brick farm house is a long, low building which is a dog’s boarding house. Any one going away in summer can put a pet animal there and know that it will have a good time roaming over the farm with the men.”
“Cats have a dreadful time,” I said, “when their owners go away and leave them.”
Billie began to laugh, and I said in surprise, “My friend, have you turned heartless about cats?”
“No, no,” said Billie, “but just listen to what Sammy-Sam is saying, as he walks up and down here under the trees.”
I looked at our handsome little lad, as he paced to and fro, a book by a well-known animal lover in his hand. Missie, before she went out this afternoon, had promised him a quarter if he would learn a nice poem for her before she came home, and this is what he chose, and it fitted in so well with what I had been saying that it had made Billie laugh:
“THE WAIL OF THE CAT”