He peeped out from behind the picture and saw the Little Boy dress himself. He heard him say: “I can’t poss’bly get vese shoes on, but I’ll try and try and try.” He thought how much pleasanter it was to be a Swift and have all his clothes grow on, and to go barefoot all the year.
He heard the Lady say: “Why, you precious Boy! You did get your shoes on, after all.” Then he saw them go off to breakfast, racing to see who would beat.
After they were gone, he fluttered out to the window, and there the Lady found him, and the Little Boy danced around and wanted to touch him, but didn’t quite dare. The Lady said: “I think this must have been your Bear,” and the Little Boy said: “My teeny-weeny little bitty Bear wiv feavers on.” He heard the Little Boy ask, too, why the bird had so many pins sticking out of his tail, and this made him cross. He did not understand what pins were, but he felt that anybody ought to know about tail-quills.
He didn’t know much about Boys, for this was the first one he had ever seen, and he wondered what those shiny white things were in his mouth. He had never seen teeth and he could not understand. He wondered how the Boy got along without a bill, and pitied him very much. This Little Boy did not seem so very terrible. He even acted a bit afraid of the Swift.
Next the young Swift felt himself lifted gently in the Lady’s hand and laid in a box with soft white stuff in it and two small holes cut in the cover. He was carried from room to room in the house and shown to other people. Once he heard a queer voice say, “Meouw!” and then the Little Boy stamped his foot and said: “Go way, Teddy Silvertip. You can’t have my little bird, you hungry Cat.”
After this the young Swift was more scared than before, and would have given every feather he had to be safely back in the nest in the chimney. He was hungry, too, and he wanted to see his father and his dear mother. He beat his wings against the sides of the box and cried for his mother. “Oh,” he said, “if I were only back in the nest I wouldn’t move. I wouldn’t move a bit.” Then the Cat mewed again and he kept still from fright.
At last he was taken into the open air and placed in the top of a short evergreen, where the Cat could not reach him. Here he clung, weak and lonely and scared, blinking his half-blinded eyes in a light brighter than he had yet seen. All the rest of that day he stayed there, while his father and mother and their other children were sleeping in the home nest. He expected never to see them again, but he did want to tell them how sorry he was.
After the sun had set and the moon was shining, he saw his father darting to and fro above him. “Father!” he cried. “Father, I am so sorry that I moved past the twig. I was very naughty.”
His father heard and flew down to tuck a fat and juicy May Beetle into his mouth. “You poor child!” said he. “Eat that and don’t try to talk. You will not do such things when you are older. I will get you some more food.”
When he returned Mrs. Swift was with him, and they petted and fed the young Swift all night, never scolding him at all, because, as they said, he had been punished quite enough and was sorry. And that was true. His grandmother came also with a bit of food. She told him that they would feed him every night and that he should hide in the branches each day until his feathers were grown.