"O, one of my brothers, after eating the plant that makes us wise, heard a little girl begging him to come and live with her. She promised a beautiful cage in the summer-house, and plants to eat and drink."
"And he went?"
"Yes; he was so unwise. Before the end of a week the little girl had forgotten to feed him, and he lay dead in the bottom of his cage."
"Yet that was an accident; the little girl was sorry, I am sure."
"Her sorrow did not bring him to life again; and I could tell sadder stories--O, too sad stories for to-day!" Here yellow-bird stopped talking, and breathed forth a low, mournful song.
The squirrel, hearing him, turned quickly: "This will never do! Why, friend, we're going to a feast, and not a funeral; pray give us some gladder music."
"Excuse me, I never can sing so soon after eating," said yellow-bird, who was not willing to leave his new friend.
As for Minnie, she had never stood so near a bird before in her life; and could not be satisfied with looking into yellow-bird's round eyes, and stroking the soft feathers on his neck. She had a hundred questions to ask; and he answered so graciously that she began to think she would rather live with those gentle creatures, the birds, than with her kind, but wild and frisky friends, the squirrels.
You may remember it was Minnie's wish at first to live like a bird, on that morning--how long ago it seemed to her now!--when she had sat on her father's door-step, and watched a sparrow soar into the sky, and sing.
They had not time for many words before reaching the water, which in one place spread to a little pond beneath the trees, and reflected the leafy branches on every side, and the sky, with its pearl-white clouds, and the sunshine that lay across it like a path of gold.