Who knows?—perhaps the bird had been sent to call her back to duty, to encourage her never to despair, to bring her a lesson straight from Mother Nature. Something of Nature’s tender care for the weak and unprotected was in his coming to visit her garret; it was not for nothing he had chosen out the barest and poorest of them all, driving away with the rustle of his tiny wings those other dark, overshadowing wings—the wings of death. She found herself calling down blessings on him, thanking him for arriving so opportunely, weeping with joy to see his graceful gambols; for he was not frightened now, but bright and gay, and rather amused than otherwise at the four walls that had suddenly replaced the boundless plains of air.
A new life began for the two.
Monsieur Friquet—that was the name she had given him—seemed to be quite content to take his place as house-mate with the poor work-girl, whose heart was so full of affection, and who, to his partial eyes, looked as pretty as the prettiest things he had ever seen in the world outside. Did she not always wear a kind smile on her lips whenever she came home? And is not kindness, when all is said and done, the same thing as beauty?
Monsieur Friquet had forgotten all about the distractions of the streets. Like a rakish younger son who has been living for years on his wits, he thoroughly enjoyed this life of slippered ease in a cosy house, where, it is true, the sun did not often penetrate, but then neither did the wind. Its quiet was unbroken all day long while his mistress was abroad, allowing him to doze and dream away the long hours till her return set stove and saucepans in activity again.
He was a lazy loon, and nothing could have suited him better than to have a place at table laid out for him morning and evening, without his having so much as to put his head outside the door.
He had known so many of his comrades who had perished miserably under a cat’s claws, at the corner of a gutter-pipe or in the treacherous shadow of a chimney-stack; so many who, grown old and impotent, and unable to find themselves a warm lodging, had died a lonely death on some deserted housetop; in fact, he had witnessed so much disappointment and disillusion and misery that he was ready—some days, at any rate—to swear he would not exchange for all the spacious blue of heaven shining in through the windowpane the indigo-blue paper with white bunches of flowers that covered the garret walls.
He had put on flesh, and his chirp had grown thick and fruity; nowadays the graceless fellow had nothing but ill to say of the freedom he had lost, but which, after all, was limited, in summer, to scolding and squabbling in the tree-tops, and, in winter, to freezing on a wretched perch.
And pr’t! prr’t! chirp! chirp! he went, in scorn of everything that could remind him of the old bad times of his life.
How much better to sit soft and warm over a good feed of bird-seed, to sleep away his afternoons in slothful ease, never to soil his feathers scratching for doles in a dungheap, but to live like a gentleman on his means, among his own belongings, without even a thought of work or worry!
Monsieur Friquet, you see, was a philosopher of an accommodating temper.