Penelope and the Others: Story of Five Country Children

by Amy Walton

But the doctor went further than this. Sometimes he came to a stand-still in his writing, murmured to himself, frowned, walked heavily up and down the room, but found no way out of the difficulty. Then, as a last resource, he would open the door of Jack’s cage and invite him to perch on his finger. Jack would step jauntily down, raising all the grey feathers on his head till it was twice its usual size. Absently, but with great tenderness, the doctor would scratch it with one large forefinger; then, suddenly, the word or sentence he sought returning to his mind, he would bundle Jack into his cage, snatch up his pen, and begin to write furiously. Jack never failed to repay him by a vicious dig at his hand, which was sometimes successful, but this the doctor never seemed to notice.

“Though,” thought Ambrose as he watched all this in silence, “it must hurt him, because I know how hard jackdaws peck.”

He would have liked a little conversation on the subject with his master, for he felt that though he did not know much Latin, he could hold his own about jackdaws. There had been many at the Vicarage, which had all come to unexpected or dreadful ends, and Ambrose was thoroughly acquainted with their ways and habits.

But he was still far too much in awe of Dr Budge to venture on any subject apart from his lessons, and he contented himself with watching him and his bird with the closest interest.

They were an odd pair of friends. One so trim and neat, with such slender legs and such a glossy black toilette; the other so crumpled and shabby, with no regard for appearances at all, and his clothes never properly brushed. As he held himself upright on the doctor’s finger, the jackdaw had the air of considering himself far the superior being.

Things went on in this way for about a fortnight, and Ambrose felt quite as strange and far-away from Dr Budge as the day he had begun his lessons, when something happened which changed his ideas very much.

One morning, arriving at his usual hour with his books under his arm, and his exercise carefully written out, he was surprised to find the study empty. The doctor’s chair was pushed back from the table as though he had risen hastily, and his pen was lying across his paper, where it had made a great blot of ink.

Lifting his eyes to the cage in the window, Ambrose saw that that was empty also; the little door was open, and there was no smart, active figure within. What did it all mean? While he was wondering, the doctor came slowly into the room with a troubled frown on his brow.

He greeted Ambrose, and sat down in his usual seat, but there was evidently something amiss with him, although he was as attentive as ever to his pupil’s needs. Ambrose noticed, however, that when he had done saying his lessons, and had an exercise to write by himself, Dr Budge could not settle down as usual to his own work. After a short time he began to sigh and fidget, and then took his usual heavy walk up and down the room, stopping from force of habit at the jackdaw’s cage, and half raising his hand as though to invite him to come out. When he had seen this several times, Ambrose longed to ask, “Is the jackdaw lost?” for he now began to feel sure this was the case. It was quite natural, he thought; jackdaws always did get lost, and he knew what a trouble it was sometimes to get them back. If the doctor would only talk about it he might be able to help him, but he had not the courage to open the subject himself.

So he went on with his lessons in silence, but by the time the hour came for him to go away, he had said the words over so often to himself that they seemed to come out without any effort of his own.