“Oh, no! only I was thinking I shall miss Caruso.”
Blue heard this with a little dismay, for he thought it not unlikely that he should be obliged to leave the bird for treatment. He wondered whether he ought to prepare Doodles for such a possibility, or wait and let things come as they would. Finally he ventured:—
“Maybe the bird doctor will want to keep him a day or two.”
A shadow fell on the fair little face.
“Well,” replied the boy slowly, “I can get along if he has to stay. You tell the man to not think about me at all, but just to do what’s best for Caruso—oh, won’t it be nice if he can fix Caruso’s wing all right!” The sorrow of the possible separation was forgotten in the joy of the moment.
It was a long, hard tramp up the Temple Hill Road; but Blue Stickney, with abounding strength in every muscle of his lithe little body, was scarcely conscious of fatigue when he spied the rambling, dilapidated structure known as the Hayward place, and presently he was on the porch of the white house beyond.
A stocky little man opened the door, whom the boy rightly conjectured to be the owner himself. His face was framed in an abundance of wavy reddish-gray hair, and his keen blue eyes looked kindly at his visitor over a pair of silver-bowed spectacles.
Blue briefly told his errand, bringing a smile to the face of the little man when he mentioned the name of Fitzpatrick.
“I dinna ken a better mon,” he observed, with a strong Scotch accent. “I am glad to welcome ony freend o’ his.”
As they entered the big, sunny room on the left of the wide hall, the boy looked about in plain astonishment, for on every side, high and low, were birds—birds in cages, and birds free to fly wherever they would.