“Come, then, Jack,” he said in a soothing tone.
The bird hesitated a moment, and then, to Ambrose’s great excitement, stepped on to the offered finger, and allowed himself to be drawn down from the tree. After this, his cage being brought out with no signs of the stranger, and some choice morsels of food placed in it, he showed no more bad temper, but marched in at the door, and began to eat greedily.
The doctor breathed a sigh of relief at this happy ending, and Ambrose, with his own jackdaw in the basket again, stood by with a proud smile on his face.
“Wasn’t it a good plan?” he said. “And now you’ll cut his wing, won’t you? else p’r’aps he’ll get away again.”
“We shall see, we shall see,” said Dr Budge, reaching up to hang the cage on its old nail in the window. “At any rate I am very much obliged to you, and to David, and to Andrew—a friend in need is a friend indeed.”
It was wonderful, Ambrose thought on his way home, that Dr Budge had remembered three names and got them all right. Nancy came running to meet him at the white gate.
“Well,” she cried, “has he come back?”
“It’s all right,” said Ambrose, “and Dr Budge is very much obliged to us.”
He spoke importantly, which was always trying to Nancy.
“Do you suppose,” she continued, “that the doctor’s jackdaw really heard yours call, or would he have come back anyway?”