“I could bring my tongue round to Peter better; would he answer to Peter?” asked Libbie, now on the point of departing.
“Happen he might, but I think he’d come readier to the three syllables.”
On Valentine’s Day, Jupiter’s cage was decked round with ivy leaves, making quite a pretty wreath on the wicker-work; and to one of them was pinned a slip of paper, with these words, written in Libbie’s best round hand:
“From your faithful Valentine. Please take notice his name is Peter, and he’ll come if you call him, after a bit.”
But little work did Libbie do that afternoon; she was so engaged in watching for the messenger who was to bear her present to her little Valentine, and run away as soon as he had delivered up the canary, and explained to whom it was sent.
At last he came; then there was a pause before the woman of the house was at liberty to take it upstairs. Then Libbie saw the little face flush up into a bright colour, the feeble hands tremble with delighted eagerness, the head bent down to try and make out the writing (beyond his power, poor lad, to read), the rapturous turning round of the cage in order to see the canary in every point of view, head, tail, wings, and feet; an intention in which Jupiter, in his uneasiness at being again among strangers, did not second, for he hopped round so as continually to present a full front to the boy. It was a source of never-wearying delight to the little fellow, till daylight closed in; he evidently forgot to wonder who had sent it him, in his gladness at his possession of such a treasure; and when the shadow of his mother darkened on the blind, and the bird had been exhibited, Libbie saw her do what, with all her tenderness, seemed rarely to have entered into her thoughts—she bent down and kissed her boy, in a mother’s sympathy with the joy of her child.
The canary was placed for the night between the little bed and window; and when Libbie rose once, to take her accustomed peep, she saw the little arm put fondly round the cage, as if embracing his new treasure even in his sleep. How Jupiter slept this first night is quite another thing.
Whit-Monday in Dunham Park.
From “Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras,” Howitt’s Journal, 1847