“Yes, ma’am. They make excellent pies, and——”
“Oh, hush—no!”
“The boys will catch them, ma’am, if you don’t. They set traps in the woods. And they puts food under them. And the little birds go to get it, and are caught and killed.”
“How cruel and treacherous! Poor little things, to be frozen out, and starved out, and to come to us for food and shelter, and to be killed and eaten. The boys shan’t trap them on our place, any way. So if you or Leo find a trap in our woods break it up, and if you find a trapper whip him!” said the little champion of birds, as she left the kitchen.
That day passed with Drusilla less drearily than usual.
When all her household duties had been discharged, she sat in her snug little drawing-room, feasting upon her new books, and furtively watching the snow-birds that were feasting upon the crumbs on the window-sill, and which as furtively watched her, and flew away the instant they caught her eyes, only to fly back the instant they saw them fall upon her book again; for these little raiders did not yet know their benefactress.
So quiet was this place that the wild creatures of the woods feared not to approach it; and Drusilla, looking from her window, could see the squirrel seated on a twig and nibbling his nut, or the opossum curled up in his hole, or the fleet little hare race across the frozen snow, or the raccoon peeping from the hollow of his tree. It was well that this child of nature loved nature with all her children so well, for not a human being could Drusilla see from her window.
Her beautiful wild wood home—beautiful even in the dead of winter—was separated on all sides by many acres of thick woods from any public thoroughfare. The road leading through the woods was a strictly private one leading to her house, and nowhere else.
Drusilla sat alternately reading and watching her favorites, until two o’clock in the afternoon, when Pina brought in her mistress’s simple dinner of boiled chicken and custard pudding.
It was a solitary dinner; for things had come to such a pass now that the little wife, instead of taking a luncheon in the middle of the day, and waiting dinner for the husband who never, never came to eat it, always now dined alone soon after noon.