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Page 36
While he had been talking he had been glancing toward me where I hung
in the window, and he now politely asked if he might come to look at
me. Eliza gave a surprised consent, but watched the boy closely as he
stood near and chirped to me calling me, "Po-o-o-r Dickey Downy," as
soon as he found out my name. I saw from the way Eliza kept her eyes
on his movements that she was expecting he would do something to hurt
me, but in this she was pleasantly disappointed, for he never once
touched my cage and cooed as softly when he spoke to me as Polly
herself might have done.
I was quite afraid of him at first, for ever since my experience with
the wicked schoolboys who clubbed us in the linden trees, and my later
experience with Joe, I disliked boys very much.
[Illustration: The Bobolink.]
When John Charles had bidden Eliza "good-morning" and tipped his hat
again and the door closed after him, she said to me: "Why, Dickey, that
was a new kind of a boy! He never once tried to hurt you or to scare
you. It shows that all boys are not rough, and I shall always like
John Charles, for he is a little gentleman."
To this sentiment I fully agreed, and I thought, "Alas! why are not all
boys as gentle as John Charles?"
In a few hours I felt as much at home with Eliza as if I had always
lived there, and I was much pleased when I heard her tell Katharine at
the supper table the next evening how much she had enjoyed having me
with her.
"A bird is ever so much better company than a clock," she said; "though
when I'm here by myself I always like to hear the clock tick. It seems
as if I were not so entirely alone. But a bird is better. I talked to
Dickey to-day and he twittered back. He has such a cute way of perking
his little head to one side just as knowing as you please, and he acts
exactly as if he were considering whether he should answer 'yes' or
no' to what I say, and then it is such fun to watch him smooth down his
feathers. He washes and irons them so nicely and works away as
industriously as if he were afraid he'd lose his 'job.'"
Miss Katharine rose from the table and stuck a lump of sugar for me to
taste between the wires of my cage.
"I am surrounded by poor dead birds in the store all day," she
observed, "and spend so much of my time sewing their wings and heads
and tails on hats and sort boxfuls of them for customers to look at,
that even a living bird saddens me."
"Yes, it must be very depressing. What a shame to kill them; they are
so cute and pretty and such happy little creatures! See how cunning he
looks nibbling at that sugar," and the sister joined Miss Katharine in
watching me.
"But do you know, Kathy, I don't believe that women would continue
wearing bird trimmings if they stopped a minute to think about it. It
doesn't seem wrong to them because they never considered the question.
They simply haven't thought about it at all."
"Somebody set the fashion and they all followed like a flock of sheep,"
answered the other with a sneering laugh.
"Yes, that's just the way. They go along without thinking. They only
know it is the style, and they don't stop to inquire whether it can be
indulged in innocently or hurtfully. Now I believe that if their
attention was particularly called to it, the most of them would quit
it."
Miss Katharine brightened into a smile and half unclasped her little
satchel.
"If a bird could talk," pursued the lame girl, "what a revelation it
could make. What lovely things it could tell us of that upper kingdom
of the air where it floats and the distant land it sees! What sweet
secrets of nature it knows that man with all his wisdom can never find
out. And then its gift of song! Why, if thousands and thousands of
dollars were spent in training the finest voice in the world it could
never equal the notes of a bird. A woman who could perfectly imitate a
lark's carol would make her fortune in a month. The world would go
wild over her."
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