Presently she scattered more crumbs, first on the floor and then on the window-sill, and he soon came hopping up to them on his little pink toes, flirting his tail and looking as happy as a king, the glutton!
What a darling he was, to be sure! She forgot all thoughts of death, to see him so alive and so handsome, coming and going, marching up and down with his mettlesome air, his rolling eye, his tossing head, his everlasting pickings and peckings and his fine look of swagger and impudence. He had a way of peeping at her askance, winking one eye with a merry, mocking glint in it, that seemed to say unmistakably: “I don’t mind eating your bread, because it’s downright good; but never you think I’m going to give up my freedom for you. I shall be off and away again just whenever I choose.”
Other times he would fix his little black beads of eyes meditatively upon her face, scrutinising her features as if bent on reading her inmost thoughts, but never missing a peck at the food for all that, or one crumb of this long, luxurious repast.
When he had eaten up every scrap, she got some more and offered it him, this time in her palm.
Up he fluttered, took his stand in front of her hand, examined it from every side, from above and from below, wishing but not daring; then suddenly caution carried the day, and he hopped away.
“Pst! pst!” she chirped to him, but never stirred. Her stillness reassured him; with a determined air, feeling a sinking again in his insatiable little stomach—it was not every day he had such a chance of filling it—he hopped forward, then drew back again; finally, making up his mind once for all, he began to peck warily at the contents of the well-stored hand.
She watched him with delight and admiration. The sight of him and his pretty ways stirred deep, unsuspected feelings within her. The blue sky seemed to have entered at her humble window, as if the bird had brought in along with him a fragment of space. Under his wing he hid, Claire thought, all the gaiety and brightness of the spring.
Memories awoke in her heart; she dreamed of the woodlands, the fields of golden grain, the water-springs, all the glories of kindly Mother Nature. Three or four times in her colourless life she had been taken into the country; she had heard the birds sing, the great trees swaying and rustling in the breeze and the prattling of the brooks. One day—it was fifteen years ago at least—she had actually dropped asleep on the moss in the warm shadow of the woods, and when she awoke the old oaks seemed to be smiling down on her.
Her black thoughts fled before this memory of rosy hours.
Besides, after days of gloom do not happier days follow? Had not he, too, her little friend, had not he known the hardships of winter? Shivering with cold, he had endured frost and bitter wind; his nest battered by the hail, his plumage soaked by the rain, his wings stiff with pain—was not all this far harder to bear than the gibes and insults of a few silly girls, giddy-pated perhaps rather than really ill-natured? Twenty times, a hundred times over, death had hovered near, when the storms scattered the leaves and tore down the nests all round him; but he had kept a good heart, and when spring-time came back again, had he not been rewarded for his bravery by happy, happy days? As she thought of the stubborn courage of the little sparrow, she was ashamed of her own weakness.