He hung it around her neck. The bird looked up into her face with its bright little eyes. Nora put down her lips, and kissed it. Then she looked up at the man, and said faintly, “I will.”
The man caught up his great shears, and in less than five minutes Nora’s hair lay spread out upon the table. She turned away from it, weeping.
But Paul pulled her roughly along; and she soon dried her tears by saying over to herself, “It will grow; it will grow. And I have two now,—the bird and Paul. Before I had but one,—Paul: now two,—Paul and the bird, the bird and Paul,—two.”
For a whole week after this, Nora could think of nothing but her bird. It was lame. The man had cheated her: he had given her a bird that would not sell. But Nora loved it all the better for this. She would sit on the curb-stone, and let it pick crumbs from her mouth. While she was walking about, the bird hung from her neck in its little basket. Nights, she let it sleep in her bosom.
Very often, ladies and gentlemen passing along the street would stop when they saw her feeding her bird. They seemed to think it a very pretty sight. Or if people met her walking, the basket hanging around her neck, with the bird’s head peeping out, they would turn and say, “Now, isn’t that cunning?”
But one day, at the end of the week, Paul came from fighting with some boys: they had beaten him, and this had made him mad and cross. Nora had begged nothing very nice that day. He called her lazy, and came behind, as she was feeding her bird, and knocked it upon the pavement.
“There!” said he: “now you will do something.”
The bird was killed. Nora caught it to her bosom, and sobbed out, “O Paul! my little bird! O Paul!” Then she lay down upon the pavement, and cried aloud. Paul ran off, and presently a policeman came and ordered her up.
Nora had now lost her only comfort: no, not her only comfort; for she could still watch the little girls walking with beautiful ladies; and could still listen, standing upon the back-piazza, to the singing of evening hymns. And one day she discovered something which gave her great joy.
Without knowing that she could, without meaning to try to sing, she herself sang. At first it was only a faint, humming noise: but she started with pleasure; for it was the very tune in which the lady sang hymns to her little girl. She tried again, and louder; then louder still; and at last cried out, “O Paul! it’s just the same! it’s just the same! I didn’t think I could! How could I, Paul?—how did I sing?”