LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| COLOURED PLATES | |
| Baltimore Oriole | [Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| Scarlet Tanager | [34] |
| Blue Jay | [129] |
| Wood Duck | [214] |
| Killdeer | [224] |
| Indigo Bunting | [280] |
| Cardinal | [286] |
| Bluebird | [314] |
| Red-winged Blackbird | [334] |
| Belted Kingfisher | [340] |
| American Goldfinch | [422] |
| Rose-breasted Grosbeak | [426] |
| FULL-PAGE HALF-TONES | |
| Feeding the Orphans | [vi] |
| Chickadee | [26] |
| Snowy Heron | [66] |
| Clipping Ostrich Plumes | [74] |
| Purple Martin | [96] |
| Bird-houses and Nesting-boxes | [106] |
| Terns and Skimmers on the Wing | [142] |
| Golden Plover | [148] |
| The Wings in Flight | [152] |
| Red-shouldered Hawk | [154] |
| Screech Owl | [158] |
| Barn Owl | [166] |
| Short-eared Owl | [168] |
| Marsh Hawk | [170] |
| Sparrow Hawk | [174] |
| White-breasted Nuthatch | [178] |
| Flicker | [190] |
| Downy Woodpecker | [194] |
| Ruffed Grouse | [198] |
| Just Out | [200] |
| Domesticated Bob-white Calling | [202] |
| Grouse showing Ruff and Tail | [206] |
| Woodcock on Nest | [212] |
| Meadowlark | [218] |
| Mourning Doves | [220] |
| Spotted Sandpiper | [222] |
| Least Sandpiper | [224] |
| Herring Gulls | [232] |
| Tree-Sparrow | [248] |
| Shelter for Bird Food | [250] |
| Robin | [326] |
| Nighthawks | [370] |
| Chimney Swift Resting | [374] |
| Wood Thrush and Nest | [378] |
| Catbird on Nest | [384] |
| Yellow-billed Cuckoo | [404] |
| Red-eyed Vireo on Nest | [406] |
GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS
I
GRAY LADY APPEARS
Sarah Barnes hurried up the hill road so fast that by the time she reached the short bit of lane that turned in at her own gate she was quite out of breath, and oh, so warm! Fanning vigorously with her sun-hat did not help her much, for its wide rim had a rent in it, made by Jack, the family puppy, so that when she reached the steps of the porch, she sank down in a heap, only having breath enough to exclaim, “Oh, grandma, what do you think?”
Old lady Barnes with a sigh dropped the checked shirt that she was patching into the big work-basket that rested on the bench beside her. This basket was already overflowing with other garments for both boys and girls, that needed everything in the way of repair from a button to a knee patch, or even to a whole sleeve, for with a slim purse and six children to keep covered neither Grandma Barnes’ work-basket nor her fingers knew many empty moments.
Taking off her spectacles and rubbing her eyes, as if to see the news as well as to hear it, she said: “Don’t tell me Tommy has got hurt in that reaping-machine, down at Weatherby’s. I told your pa he was too young to handle such a job!”
“No, Tommy’s all right—they were gathering in the last stack as I came by.”
“Lammy hasn’t gone in swimming again down to the crick with the Connor boys?”
“Nope, he’s stopped behind at the Centre to tend store for Mr. Sims, ’cause his horse got loose in Deacon Mason’s orchard and ate himself into the colic!”
“Billy hasn’t fell off the fish-market roof, has he? Your pa took him there this mornin’ to help hand up shingles, though ’twas against my wishes.”
“No, grandma, Billy’s all right, too,” said Sarah, who had recovered her breath by this time and was beginning to laugh. “What makes you always think worry? Pa is all right, and Mary and Ruth are helping the minister’s wife get the hall ready for the cake sale, and I’m here, so you see there’s nothing the matter with us.”
“Think worry!” exclaimed grandma, now settling her glasses again and preparing to hear the news comfortably so long as neither her son nor his children, to whom she was both grandmother and mother, were in danger, “wait until your only son’s wife dies and leaves you to keep track of six children, with as mixed tempers and complexions as ducks, chickens, and turkeys all in one brood, and I guess you’ll think worry too. But why don’t you fetch out your news?—Not but what you are all good and promising enough in your way,” she added hastily, lest she should be found belittling her own flesh and blood, which she considered next to breaking the whole ten commandments.
“Well, granny,” began Sarah, bringing out her words slowly, and satisfied that the old lady’s expectations were sufficiently raised and that she would have an attentive listener, “the General Wentworth place is open and they’re putting new fences all around the back of it, and a lovely Gray Lady and a little girl with golden hair have come to live there. They have been there since spring too, and I didn’t know it. The girl is as old as me, but she’s smaller, for she isn’t strong and sits in a wheel-chair, and they’ve asked me to come in again.”
Off came the glasses, and the old hands that folded them away in their case trembled with excitement. “The General Wentworth place open after all these years, since his only daughter Elizabeth married her cousin John, whom we all expected to die a bachelor, and then he fell into poor health! You don’t remember him, Sarah Barnes, ’cause you wasn’t born, but he was a mighty strange fellow, handsome and likely; he wouldn’t be a soldier as his uncle wished, but he was great for readin’ books, and he used to wander all over the country here watching birds and things and drawin’ pictures of them. I heard John died a couple of years ago away in foreign parts,—it can’t be Elizabeth that’s come back,—she wouldn’t be a gray-haired old woman, as you say. I knew her when she was a girl. She was full of life and rode a pony everywhere; her father used to bring her over to our mill, and many a ginger cooky of my baking has she ate. No, it can’t be little Miss Elizabeth,—it’s more likely some one that has hired or bought the place and goin’ to upset and change it all.”
“I didn’t say the lady was old, grandma; she has lots of soft, silvery, wavy hair with big gray eyes to match, and such a pretty colour in her cheeks, and her dress was soft and fluffy too and the colour as if purple and white violets and silver popple leaves were all mixed together,” said Sarah, moving her hands before her, a little way she had when talking, as if in describing what she had seen she was touching the real object, for Sarah, though only a little girl from a bare hillside farm and taught at the school below at Foxes Corners, had a keen eye for colour and loved beautiful things, so that ugliness or unkindness of any sort really hurt her if she could have explained her feelings.
“My Gray Lady’s first name is Elizabeth, though, and she knows you and your molasses cakes,” continued Sarah, after a moment’s pause, “for she said, ‘When you go home say to your grandmother that Elizabeth who rode the black pony sends her love, and that she will go to see her soon, and that she hopes that she will give the little Elizabeth some of the cookies of which she has often heard.’ Elizabeth is the little girl, but I’m going to call her Goldilocks, because the name matches her hair and she looks as if she was meant to—
“ ‘Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam
And feast upon strawberries, sugar, and cream.’ ”
“Elizabeth Wentworth and her daughter back here and I never knew it!” cried Grandma Barnes, rising as if to take immediate action. “Your Aunt Jane might well say, as she did on her last visit, that this hill farm is as far out o’ the world as livin’ in a lighthouse that had no stairs or boat to it, and the only way to get anywhere was to take a dive and swim. But see here, Sarah Barnes, how did you come to meet the General’s folks? It’s near a mile from the road up from the Centre to their front gate; mebbe you ran across them in the village, and if so, how came you to speak?”
Sarah opened her lips to answer and then stammered and grew red under her grandmother’s keen gaze. “I didn’t pass their gate and I didn’t meet them in the village. I was—I was just taking a bunch of field flowers, that I got along the road, up to the cemetery to mother, and then when I go there, I usually take some to the General’s mound too, ’cause nobody took anything, except a little flag Memorial Day, and it’s usually all faded by now. This year, though, the lot was planted with flowers, and I was wondering why. I was sittin’ there watching a gray squirrel that lives in one of the old cannons that stand at the plot corners. You see the squirrel knows me because I’ve taken him nuts two winters whenever we’ve gone to Pine Hill coasting, and he comes up real close. To-day when he came up, I only had some cracker crumbs in my pocket, but he acted real pleased to see me, and I was so busy talking to him that I didn’t hear anybody coming up until somebody said, ‘Who is this little girl that brings flowers to an old soldier’s grave, and has a squirrel for a friend?’ ”
“A nice way of wasting your time, I must say, of a week-day afternoon, and so much to be done at home,” broke in Mrs. Barnes, rather crossly.
But Sarah, not minding the interruption, continued: “Then I jumped up, and there was Gray Lady and Goldilocks sitting in a nice big straw chair, like those on Judge Jones’ porch, only it had wheels and a handle behind like a baby wagon, and a fattish woman with a pleasant face was pushing it.”
“Well, what happened next?” asked grandma. “I wonder she didn’t tell you not to trespass and feed animals in a cemetery!”
“Oh, no, she liked it, and we got acquainted right away. She asked me what put it in my head to bring the flowers, and told her that it was because nobody else did and that I loved the General because my mother told me that though he lived through a lot of battles, he got the wound that made him die long after, in trying to get back a little black child that had been sold away from its mother, for it’s an awful thing to take children away from their mothers, and only God should do it, and I know He must be always sorry when He has to. And I said I knew how it hurt because He took my mother away from me.
“Goldilocks said she wished that she had a tame squirrel down in her garden, and I said there were plenty of squirrels there, and she could begin to tame ’em as soon as food gets scarce. Then she asked how I knew, and then it all came out that Dave and Tommy Todd, Mary, and I often take a cross-cut through the General’s orchard, when we go over to Aunt Jane’s. Then they asked me to walk down home with them.
“There was a new high fence all round the orchard, with a gate by the old house in the corner that has the big stone chimney, where the Swallows live, so we can’t cut across any more, and before I thought, I said so; but Gray Lady said, ‘I think, Sarah, it will be quite as pleasant for you to come in at the front gate, and go out at the back, as to crawl through a hole in the brush like a fox or a woodchuck,’ and I guess it will, for she doesn’t want us to stop coming.
“Then I asked her if the house had lovely pictures in it and birds with real eyes sitting on perches, and more books than the Sunday-school library, and she laughed and asked who told me that, and I said it was Jake Gorham that went up there to set new glass in the roof light after the hail-storm last summer.”
“Sarah Barnes! such gall as to make free and talk to General Wentworth’s daughter like that! I just wonder what she thinks of you!”
“She didn’t tell me, grandma; but, oh, what do you suppose, she said that if I came down some afternoon, she’d show me all the pictures and then I could tell Goldilocks how to begin to make friends with the squirrels, and that she would show me their tree with a lunch-counter on it for birds, where there is something for every kind to eat. Do you suppose she will ask me for this Saturday, grandma, and may I wear my pink lawn, if it stays warm? My Sunday dress for fall shows where the hem was let down.”
“She may and then again mayhap ’twill be the last you’ll ever hear of it. Come to think of it, in those days my ginger cookies were mixed with butter instead of lard, and they had currants in them. I guess I’ll risk it to make a batch to-morrow, lest Mrs. John should come up—that is if I finish all this mending, for there is only one more Saturday and Labor Day, and then school opens, and all you girls and boys will be making excuses for shirking your chores. Five o’clock already! Sarah Barnes, do you go straight out and feed the chickens and then rinse those milk-pans,—that comes first before all the fine talk of seein’ pictures and making pies and cakes for birds.”
Sarah went slowly toward the barnyard and fed the greedy fowls in an absent-minded sort of way, all the while looking across the field where the birds were beginning to gather in flocks, wishing she knew them all by name and thinking of Gray Lady and Goldilocks. Would they remember the invitation or would she never perhaps see them again? School would soon begin, and that meant no spare time until after four, and it is so often rainy on Saturday.
Rain did not wait for Saturday this time, for a heavy drizzle set in that night, and Sarah went to sleep wondering exactly what a bird lunch-counter was and what became of it when it rained.
Then school began, and her new friend made no sign, and Sarah began to wonder if her meeting with Gray Lady had been one of the dreams she so often had when she sat on the orchard fence in June watching the bobolinks fly over the clover and waiting for things to happen.
II
A RAINY DAY
It was the first Friday of the fall term and there were only fifteen scholars at the weather-beaten shingled schoolhouse at Foxes Corners. The usual number in winter was twenty-five, but some of the older pupils did not return until late in October, for these boys and girls helped their fathers and mothers either about the farm work or in the house, and as this school district was located in pretty rolling hill country, with woods and a river close by, city people came to board at the farm-houses and often did not go away until they had seen the leaves redden and fall.
Miss Wilde, the teacher, was very glad to begin with only fifteen scholars. She was not very strong; the children were always restless during the first month after their vacation. Then, too, it is more difficult for a teacher to interest scholars that range from five to fifteen than where she has children all of an age.
Miss Wilde was very patient, for she loved outdoors and liberty herself, and she knew just how hard it was in these first shut-in days for the children to look out the open windows and see the broad fields stretching out to the woods, and hear the water rushing over the dam at Hull’s Mill, and then take any interest in bounding the Philippine Islands and remembering why they are of special value to the United States.
Tommy Todd was what is usually called the “bad boy” of the school. He was thirteen, keen-witted and restless. He learned his lessons quickly, and then when Miss Wilde was hearing the little ones drone out their “twice one is two,” “twice two is four,” he often sat idle in his seat devising mischief that he sometimes put in motion before school was over.
Then there were some days when it seemed as if Tommy would leave his desk and fly out of the window in spite of himself. Poor Miss Wilde had been obliged to make him change desks twice already. From his first place he could look at a pasture, where a family of woodchucks had their burrows, and he had caused several stampedes, not only among the boys, but girls also, by calling out: “Hi! there goes a buster! I bet its hide’s worth more’n a quarter! Now Jones’ yaller dog is after him! Hi! there! good work! he’s headin’ of it off! Gee, Hog’s reared and give him a bite! There they go round the hill! If the hole back t’other side I stuffed Saturday’s got loosed out, I bet on the hog!” (Ground-hog being the familiar name for the woodchuck in this region.)
Order being restored, Tommy was moved to the east side of the room. Here the view was downhill over the lowlands, ending at a great corn-field that belonged to Tommy’s grandfather. The corn was yellow in the ear, but still standing. A flock of crows that had a roost in the swampy millwoods knew all about this corn-field and considered it as their own property, for had they not superintended its planting, helped thin out the seed lest it should grow too thick, and croaked and quavered directions to old man Todd and his horses every time they ploughed and hoed? Now, guided by a careful old leader who sat on a dead sycamore top and gave warning (for all crow flocks have such a chief), they were beginning to attack the ripened ears, the scarecrows placed at intervals that had been of some use in the early season having now lost the little influence they possessed and fallen into limp heaps, like unfortunate tramps asleep by the wayside.
So every time the crows came over, Tommy would stretch up in his seat and finally slip out of it entirely and, hanging half out of the window, shake his fist at them, all the time uttering dire threats of what he would do if he only had his father’s shot-gun.
For these reasons, Friday morning saw him seated in the middle of the room with the older girls and sharing the double desk with Sarah Barnes. Now Sarah thought that Tommy was the cleverest boy she had ever seen, and Sarah had visited in Centre Village in Hattertown, and Bridgeton, been twice to the Oldtown County Fair, and would have gone to New York once with her Aunt Jane if measles had not prevented; so that her friends thought, for thirteen, she was quite a travelled lady.
Tommy also considered her favourably and had been heard to say that she was not bad for a girl; yet, to be put in the middle seats with the girls he considered an insult to his years, and he was sulky and brooded mischief all the morning.
In reality Tommy was not a bad boy in any way. What he wanted was plenty of occupation for his mind and body to work at. Miss Wilde knew this and tried to give him as many little things to do as possible. It was Tommy who had charge of the new cage rat-trap of shiny copper wire, in which it was hoped the field rats might be caught, that, as soon as cool weather came, gnawed their way in through the loose floor boards and sometimes destroyed the books, and, as Sarah Barnes declared (whose duty it was to keep the wells filled), drank the ink. Tommy also kept the water-pail full and tended the big wood-stove in winter; but none of these tasks seemed to touch the restless spot and he could think out more puzzling questions in a day than the whole school board could have answered in a week, and then, as Sarah Barnes once said, “Tommy Todd’s questions never seem to stay answered.”
Miss Wilde had taught, at first, in the school of a large town where there were plenty of pictures and maps on the walls, and charts of different kinds and reference books for the children to use, and where people who loved children would often drop in and tell them about birds and flowers or their journeys to interesting places. She had taken the country school because the doctor thought it would be better for her health, and oh, how she wished that she could have brought some of the pictures and books with her, or that some of the summer boarders who stayed until almost winter would come in and talk to her pupils. She told the children stories or read to them on Friday afternoons. She also knew that there were some travelling libraries of books that she might borrow that the children could have themselves, but reading is a habit; the children needed to be interested first. So it came about that, when the second year of her school life on the hillside began, Miss Wilde felt rather discouraged.
On this particular rainy Friday she was feeling worried about her mother, who boarded at the Centre Village and with whom she spent every week-end, going down with the mail-carrier on his return trip Friday evening and usually walking back on Sunday afternoon if no one chanced to be driving that way. Mrs. Wilde had been ill the Sunday before and Miss Wilde had not heard a word all the week. Everything had gone awry that morning, and when the last child had filed out for the dinner-hour and gone splish-splashing up the muddy road, before straightening out the room as usual, Miss Wilde sat down at the desk, her head in her hands, and two big tears splashed down on the inky blotting-paper before her. Presently she wiped her eyes, opened all the windows that the rain did not enter, took her box of luncheon from her desk, and walked slowly down the side aisle to the little porch, which also acted as the cloak-room, the place where she usually ate her luncheon when it was too cool or wet to go outdoors.
As she passed Tommy Todd’s desk she thought she heard a noise, and glanced sideways, half expecting to see him crouching under it, bent upon some prank. No one was there, and still there was a scratching sound in that vicinity. Opening the desk lid, Miss Wilde gave a scream, for inside was the new trap and inside the trap two wicked-looking old rats whose whiskers had evidently grown gray with experience.
“I wonder what he would have done with them if I had not found him out?” she said to herself, as she lifted the cage, by hooking the crook of her umbrella into the handle on the top, and carrying it with the greatest care, put it into the empty wood-box in the porch. Then she seated herself on the bench by the outer door and unstrapped her box. But it evidently was not intended that the poor teacher should lunch that day, for suddenly the door flew open and the weather-beaten face of Joel Hanks, the carrier who had the forenoon mail-route, peered anxiously in.
“You here, Miss Wilde?” he called anxiously. “I’m glad yer hain’t gone up to the house for your nooning, cause I clean fergot when I come by up, but yer Ma’s feelin’ extra poorly and uneasy, and she thought mebbe you could come back along with me instead of waiting till night. I’m goin’ to eat over to Todd’s and I can stop back for you close to one if you can arrange to go.”
“Oh, I wish I had known it before the children went to dinner,” she cried, clasping her hands together nervously and dropping the box, out of which her lunch rolled to the floor, amid the damp that had been made by wet coats, overshoes, and dripping umbrellas. “As it is, when the children come back, I cannot send them right home again, for some have a long walk. If it wasn’t for Tommy Todd, I could leave Sarah Barnes for monitor; but there are those rats, and the school board does not like me to shorten hours so soon after vacation. It’s too late for me to go over for Mrs. Bradford, or I know that she would help me by coming as she did several times last spring.”
“Sorry I couldn’t stop this morning, but I come by the lower road. Wall, mebbe you’ll think out some way and I’ll stop back a bit a’ter one,” Joel said cheerfully, going back to his covered cart and chirping to his wise old horse, who, though he was gaunt and had only one good eye, knew every letter-box on the route and solemnly zig-zagged across the road from one to the other on his way up to Foxes Corners, but as surely passed them by without notice on the return trip.
Miss Wilde had barely swept away the scattered lunch through the open door when again she heard wheels, and looking up saw that which made her stand stock-still in surprise, broom in hand,—a trim, glass-windowed depot wagon, such as she had seldom seen out of Bridgeton, drawn by a handsome pair of gray horses, whose long, flowing tails were neatly braided and fastened up from the mud with leather bands, instead of being cruelly docked short as sometimes happens. The driver, a pleasant-looking, rosy-cheeked man, was well protected by coat and boot of rubber; but before Miss Wilde could more than glance at the outfit the door opened and a lady stepped lightly out, reaching the school porch so quickly that she had no need of an umbrella.
Spying Miss Wilde, she said in a voice clear as a bell, and yet so well modulated and sweet that no one who heard her speak ever forgot its sound—“Are you the teacher here?”
“Yes.”
“And your name?”
“Rosamond Wilde,” replied the astonished girl, hastily hanging up the broom, unconsciously leading the way into the stuffy schoolroom and placing the best chair by the side of her desk, as she did when the minister, Dr. Gibbs, from Centre Village, who was president of the school board, came to hold a spelling-match.
“Thank you,” said the silvery voice, as its owner took the proffered seat, turning so that she could look out of the window.
“I have heard from Dr. Gibbs that you sometimes use part of Friday afternoon for telling the children stories, or reading something that may amuse as well as teach them, and I thought that perhaps, as the board does not object, you might sometimes be willing to have me come in and talk to them. I am very fond of children, and have one little girl of my own, so that I know very well what they enjoy. I’ve travelled for several years, and I have a great many interesting pictures I could show them. Then, too, I have always loved birds and flowers, and with my father I used to tramp about and learned to know all those of this neighbourhood. I well remember that when I was a child and studied at home, rainy Friday afternoons were always pleasant, because mother, my cousins, and I had fancy-work or some other sewing and stories; so I thought to-day perhaps would be a good time for a beginning.”
If the sky had opened and an angel come directly to her aid, Miss Wilde could not have been more overcome. She pulled herself together and began to frame a polite answer, when looking at the guest, who had thrown off her light raincoat, she caught the sympathetic glance that shot from a lovely pair of gray eyes with black lashes, and saw that the fluffy gray hair belonged to a really young woman, but a little older than herself. Forgetting that a teacher is supposed never to lose control of herself, before she realized that she had said a word she had told this friend in need about her school, Tommy Todd, her mother’s sickness, and all.
In less time than it takes to tell of it, the coachman had been told to go down to the blacksmith’s shop and wait under cover until three o’clock, and Miss Wilde was helped to make her preparation for leaving.
When the children came trooping back, they found the door between cloak-room and schoolroom closed, and teacher waiting for them in the outer room with very rosy cheeks and a happier expression than her face usually wore.
Tommy Todd looked relieved, for, he reasoned, if teacher knew there were two rats in his desk, she would not have looked pleased. In a few words Miss Wilde explained the happenings, cautioned them to be very good, and saying, “Right, left, right, left,” was about to open the door for the children to march in, when Sarah Barnes asked, “Teacher, what is her name, so we can call her by it?” Then teacher realized that she didn’t know. But as the door opened Sarah said, in a very loud whisper, as whispers are apt to sound louder than the natural voice, “Why, it’s my Gray Lady!” and so in truth it was.
Teacher watched them until they took their seats, and then gently closed the door behind her. For a moment no one spoke. Tommy Todd peeped cautiously into his desk to be sure the rats were safe, and found to his dismay that they were gone. Inwardly he hoped they wouldn’t get loose, for Gray Lady didn’t look as if she would like rats, which showed that after only one glance he wished to please her, while at the same time the name by which they first knew her became fixed in the mind of every child.
III
GRAY LADY AT SCHOOL
The silence inside the school continued a full minute, that seemed like an hour, and the dripping of the rain from the gutter was so plain that Sarah found herself counting the drops—“One—two—three—four—splash!”
Fifteen pairs of eyes were fastened upon the newcomer, and, as she caught the various questions in them, the colour in her cheeks deepened. Suddenly she recognized her little friend whom she had met on the hillside the week before. “Sarah Barnes,” said Gray Lady, “will you not tell me the names of your schoolmates and introduce me to them? It is always so much more pleasant when we are looking at people, places, or things to know what they are called.”
Then Sarah, delighted at being remembered when she had begun to be quite sure that all her hopes were in vain, guided by an inborn instinct of politeness that told her it would not be civil to stand at her desk and call out the various names, marched solemnly up to the teacher’s desk and, beginning in the front row with her own little sister Mary, repeated the fifteen names in full, with the greatest care and distinctness, and each child, not knowing what else to do, bobbed up and answered, “Present,” the same as if teacher had been calling the roll. When Sarah had finished, she was quite out of breath, for some of the names were very long; the last, that of the one little Slav in the school, Zella Francesca Mowralski, being also hard to pronounce.
“Thank you,” said Gray Lady; “I think that I can remember the first names at least. But now that you have presented your friends to me, won’t you kindly present me to them? You know who I am and where I live, do you not?”
“Of course I do!” cried Sarah, glad to be in smooth water again. “You are Goldilocks’ mother, Gray Lady, and you are our General’s daughter and you live in his house!” Then, realizing that she had given play to her own fancy rather than stated the facts expected, she fled to her desk and hid her face behind its lid.
No reproof followed her as she expected, but instead the pleasant voice again said: “Thank you, Sarah; I like the name you have given me better than my very own, and if you all know where to find the General’s house, you know where to find me,” and when Sarah, gaining courage, looked up again, she saw, what the others did not notice, that the gray eyes were brimming, though there was a smile on her lips.
“Now, children, what would you like to hear about this afternoon? Miss Wilde told me that she had intended giving you a spelling review and writing exercise of some kind, but that we might finish the day as we choose. Shall I read you a story, or would you like to ask questions and talk best?—one at a time, of course!”
“Talk—you talk,” shouted a vigorous chorus.
“By the way, Tommy Todd,” said Gray Lady, “why do you sit in the middle with the girls instead of on the outer row with the boys, where there is more room?”
Tommy, placed between Sarah Barnes and his own sister, started half up in his seat and looked all round the room as if seeking a way of escape, and finding none, dropped his gaze to his desk and sat mute with a very red face.
The question was repeated—still no answer. A hand flew up. “I know,” piped the voice of one of the little ones in front; “it’s ’cause Tommy can’t keep his eyes inside the winder if he’s by it; he’s always spying out at ground-hogs and crows and askin’ teacher questions about the birds setting on the wires, so he don’t mind his books and teacher don’t know the answers to all he asks, an’ it gives her the headache!”
“Well, Tommy,” said Gray Lady, who had learned that at least one of the children before her cared for out-of-doors, which was precisely what she wanted to know, “as long as this is a sort of holiday, suppose you take that empty seat by the east window and tell us what you see. You may open the window and the others on that side also, for I think the rain is over; yes, the clouds are breaking away.”
How fresh and sweet the air was that rushed into the close room! Tommy stuck his head out and took a great breath as he looked down over the corn-fields,—his enemies the crows were not there.
“There isn’t much to see now, it’s too wet yet,” he said; “but pretty soon there will be, for most birds and things get hungry right after a rain!”
“Olit—olit—olit—che-wiss-ch-wiss-war,” sang a little bird in a low bush by the roadside.
“What bird is that,” asked Gray Lady; “do any of you know?”
“It’s just the usually little brown bird that stays around here most all the time, but I love the tune it sings,” said Sarah Barnes. “Teacher says it’s some kind of a sparrow.”
“It is a Song Sparrow,” said Gray Lady, “and you are right in saying it stays with us almost all the year.”
“Now,” called Tommy, “the birds are beginning to come out; some Barn Swallows are flying over the low meadow and there’s a lot of ’em, and another kind strung along the wires on the turnpike. They always sit close and act that way all this month and some fly away, and ’long the first part of next month, when the corn’s all husked, they’ll be gone! Please, ma’am, why do some birds never go away, and some do, and what makes ’em come back?” Then Tommy began one of the volley of questions that Miss Wilde so dreaded.
“Yes, an’ please, ma’am,” asked Dave, “why are some birds that mate together such different colours?” “An’ what becomes of Bobolinks after Fourth of July?” asked another. “An’ what makes birds have so many kind of feet?” queried a third.
Then questions flew so thick and fast that Gray Lady could not even hear herself think, and presently, when every one had laughed at the confusion, order was restored.
“I asked you a moment ago what you would like to hear about. I think I know. You would like to hear about birds! Are there any other boys here besides Tommy and Dave who care about birds?” asked Gray Lady, who wished to have each child feel that he or she had a part in what was going on.
“I know about birds’ eggs!” cried Bobby Bates, a boy who, from being undersized, looked much younger than he really was; “I’ve got a pint fruit-jar of robins’ eggs.”
“But I’ve got a quart jar of mixed eggs,” said Dave, “and they’re mostly little ones, Wrens and Chippy birds and such like, so’s I’ve really got more’n Bobby!” he added boastfully.
Gray Lady opened her lips to speak sharply and her eyes flashed, for nest-robbing was one of the things she most detested. Then she remembered that perhaps these children had not only never even dreamed that there was any harm in it, but had never heard of the laws that wise people had made to protect the eggs of wild birds, as well as the birds themselves, from harm. So she hesitated a moment while she thought how she might best make the matter understood.
“Why do you like to collect eggs?” she asked. “Because they are pretty?”
“Yes’m, partly,” drawled Dave, “and then to see how many I can get in a spring.”
“But do you never think how you worry the mother birds by stealing their eggs, and how many more birds there would be if you let the eggs hatch out? What the rhyme says is true,—
“ ‘The blue eggs in the Robin’s nest
Will soon have beak and wings and breast,
And flutter and fly away!’
Only think, if all those robins’ eggs of yours, Bobby, and all your little eggs, Dave, should suddenly turn into birds and fly about the room, how many there would be! But now they will never have wings and swell their throats to sing to us and use their beaks to eat up insects that make the apples wormy and curl up the leaves of the great shade trees.”
“Robins don’t do any good; they just spoil our berries and grapes; dad says so, and he shoots ’em whenever he can, and he likes me to take the eggs,” said Dave, stubbornly, while Sarah Barnes exclaimed, “Yes, an’ my father says he ought to be ashamed of himself!” almost out loud.
“I know that Robins sometimes eat fruit,” said Gray Lady, firmly, “but they do so much more good by destroying bugs that the Wise Men say that neither they nor their eggs shall be taken or destroyed, and what they say is now a law. So that it is not for any one to do as he pleases in the matter. To kill song-birds or destroy their eggs is as much breaking the law as if you stole a man’s horse or cow, for these birds are not yours; they belong to the state in which you live.”
Bobby and Dave looked surprised, but Tommy and Sarah nodded to one another, as much as to say, “We knew that, didn’t we?”
“Some day, if you are clever with your lessons so that Miss Wilde can spare the time for it, I will tell you all about the reasons for these laws, and what the wild birds do for us, and what we should do for them. But first you must learn to know the names of some of the birds that live and visit hereabout, as I am now learning yours, and make friends of some of them as I hope to make friends of you.”
“Yes, yes, oh, yes!”
“You can’t make friends of birds; they won’t let you,” said Dave Drake, who was a sickly, lanky boy of fourteen with a whining voice; “they always fly away. That is, I mean tree birds, not chickens nor pigeons.”
“Chickens aren’t birds, they’re only young hens,” put in Eliza Clausen, with an expression of withering contempt. She was one of the big fourteen-year-old girls, and not being a good scholar was apt to use opposition in the place of information.
“We can make friends of at least some birds,” said Gray Lady, “if we are kind to them. When we have human visitors come to stay with us, what do we do for them?”
“We let them sleep in the best bedroom, and we get out the best china and have awful good things to eat, and give ’em a good time,” said Ruth Barnes, all in one breath.
“Yes, and we should do much the same with our bird friends. They do not need to have a bedroom prepared; they can generally find that for themselves, though even this is sometimes necessary in bad weather; but they often need food, and in order that they should have what Ruth calls ‘a good time,’ we must let them alone and not interfere with their comings and goings.
“Go softly to the west window and look out,” continued Gray Lady, raising a finger to caution silence, for from her seat on the little platform she could see over the children’s heads and out both door and windows, “and see the hungry visitors that a little food has brought to the very door.”
The children tiptoed to one side of the room, and there, lo and behold, was a great Blue Jay, a Robin, a Downy Woodpecker with his clean black-and-white-striped coat and red neck bow, and a saucy Chickadee, with his jaunty black cap and white tie, all feasting on the broken bits of Miss Wilde’s ham sandwich, while a pair of Robins were industriously picking the fruit from a remnant of huckleberry pie. Unfortunately, before the children had taken more than a good look, the door banged to and the birds flew away, the Woodpecker giving his wild sort of laugh, the Robins crying, “Quick! quick!” in great alarm, while the Jay and Chickadee told their own names plainly as they flew.
“As we have agreed to talk and ask questions, I will ask the first one,” said Gray Lady, as they all settled down, feeling very good-natured and eager to listen.
“Eliza said a few minutes ago that a chicken isn’t a bird. Now a chicken is a bird, though of course all birds are not chickens.