LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE [Bobbinette, Bobby, Dick, Dona Marina, Blondell and Miss Bascom (Page 163)] Frontispiece [Taffy] 18 [Tricksey] 43 [Dewey Ready for His Bath] 60 [Cady Taking His Singing Lesson] 94 [Blondell] 122 [Bobbinette and Bobby] 152 [Blonde, Bobby, Bobbinette, Brunette, and Blondell] 162
THE BIRD HOSPITAL
CHAPTER I.
LITTLE BILLEE
I have always been passionately fond of animals, and would like to make pets of them all. During the winter I keep a free-lunch counter on my bedroom window-sill for my little friends, the English sparrows. Often there will be two dozen partaking of the crumbs at the same time, no two looking alike, and making one think of a bootblack spread in New York. Their table manners are not always the best, I am sorry to say, and there is often a great deal of cuffing, scratching, and angry words.
When the first warm days of spring come, they all say “bon jour,” but the cold days of autumn bring them back in full force, and it is like welcoming old friends.
During the summer I keep a hospital, and I have had some very curious cases. The children bring in to me all of the stray birds they find or take away from cats. Often I have had ten at a time. Some die from want of food when I cannot make them eat, but more often from wounds received from cats or boys.
It is heartrending to have brought to me a handsome pair of robins all torn to pieces, and feel there is nothing I can do to save their lives, when I know their babies in the nests are crying for food, and will soon die from starvation.
My hospital really opened one June by my mother picking up off the front sidewalk a little brown bird which could not have been more than two weeks old. I had been ill many months, and my mother and friends had done all they could to make the days pass as quickly as possible for me. So when my mother saw the little orphan, she put him in her handkerchief and brought him to my room, thinking it might amuse me, and I took him inside the bed. After an hour he seemed very happy and not at all afraid.
I looked him over carefully, but found him uninjured. I took him to an open window, expecting to see him try to fly away, but he did not seem to have the slightest intention of doing so.