"Yes, he's very cross, poor old fellow!" said Humphrey. "Look!" holding out his hand, which bore unmistakable evidence of a bird's beak, "how he's pecked me. He always does whenever I feed him."
"I should almost be inclined not to feed him then."
"I couldn't let him starve, you know. Besides, I don't wonder he's cross. It's enough to make any one angry to be always hopping about in one little place, instead of having the whole world to fly about in. And if it wasn't for me," he added, half to himself, "he would be flying about now."
Sir Everard did not catch the last words, but the boy's face reminded him that he had touched on a painful subject, and he hastened to change it by proposing they should start for the village.
Humphrey brightened up directly, and was soon talking as gaily as usual. The painfulness of the subject consisted in this.
One day, Humphrey and Miles were amusing themselves in their gardens, when the jackdaw, then young and active, came flying past.
Humphrey without the slightest idea of touching it, flung a stone at it, exclaiming, "Get away, old fellow!"
But so unerring was his aim, that the stone struck the bird on the wing, and brought it struggling and fluttering to the ground.
Dolly, the laundry-maid, was close at hand, and she never forgot Humphrey's burst of grief and remorse, when, on picking up the jackdaw, they found both leg and wing broken. That a living creature should be deprived of its powers by his means was more than the tender-hearted child could bear, and for a long while he was inconsolable.