Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures

by Gordon Stables

In this room is Leonard’s and Effie’s library of old-fashioned picture-books, and many toys, and a little couch near the nicely-curtained window, on which it is delightful to recline on a lovely summer evening and read while dreamy, old-fashioned music is being played by a huge musical box that stands on a table, and while a breeze, laden with the odours of the woods and the wild flowers, is stealing in at the open window, and toying with the crimson curtains.

This window opens right on the lawn, that is, on the back lawn, and here a strange sight may be seen—namely, half a score of snow-white, smutty-nosed, garnet-eyed Himalayan rabbits, brought home first by a sailor uncle, and the same number of daft-looking little piebald guinea pigs. These have houses outside, and a monstrous owl called Tom is watching them half asleep from his cage near a window, and thinking how nice one or two of them would be to eat.

But we re-enter the ante-room through the casement window, and pass on into a kind of hall lighted from the roof.

In this place there are so many pets of different kinds that it is impossible to know which to admire or wonder at first. This hall communicates with another room with a larger window, which looks over the precipice right down into the lake, where lives Joe the monster pike, and the inmates of both rooms are free to scamper or fly—for here we have both fur and feathers—from one to the other.

In these rooms are perches and cages and pens, and shelves and nests and comfortable cosy corners of every description, and all kinds of seed and food dishes, and abundance of water and an allowance of milk; and everything—thanks to the little owners, and to worthy old Peter—is as clean and sweet as though nothing dwelt in the rooms. This is the home par excellence of the happy family. The secret is, that every creature must be young when placed therein, so that they soon come to know that though they may play together, they must study each other’s feelings, and neither hurt each other nor be rude to one another.

Right in the centre of the square room is a fountain playing, the spray falling down upon a charming little rockery in the middle of a stone basin. The fountain can be turned on at the will of the owner, and whenever it plays the birds take advantage of it, and fly across and across through the spray, and so enjoy a shower bath. But the white rats do not care for a bath, and when the birds, thoroughly wet and thoroughly tired of the sport, sit down on a perch to preen their draggled feathers, the cosy white rats in their garments of ermine look up at them with crimson eyes, in which dwells a kind of pity, and seem to say, “We really wouldn’t be you for all the world.”

What other pets are there in this happy family, did you ask? Well, there are pet pigmy pigeons, and pet kittens, a tame duck, who is greatly bullied, a sea-gull who talks like a Christian, half-a-dozen starlings, who inquire into everything, and a jackdaw who is never out of mischief, and whom Effie has serious thoughts of sending into exile.

As soon as Leonard and she appear they are surrounded, and the din is for a time indescribable. The dwarf or pigmy pigeons hover round them and alight on their shoulders and hands; the kittens chase the rats, who squeak, and pretend to be terribly afraid; the sea-gull struts about crying, “Oh! you pretty, pretty, pretties;” the jackdaw whistles “Duncan Grey;” all the starlings start singing at once; and the idiotic duck can’t think of anything better to do than stand flapping his wings in a corner and crying, “What, what, what, what!”

We tear ourselves away from this happy family at last, and make tracks for the bird rooms, or aviaries. One room is devoted to British, the other to foreign birds, all nicely assorted and sized, so that they live in the utmost unison. There are soft-billed birds and hard-billed birds, so there are both seeds and mash to suit their palates. Here again we have fountains, one in each aviary, and these, when playing, are a source of never-ending delight.

When the sun is shining upon the foreign aviary, what a sight it is to see those birds, in all their brilliancy of colour and beauty, flitting from bough to bough in their bonnie home; but if you want music you must enter the adjoining room, where the birds of Britain dwell. Gaudy their plumage may not be but, oh! their voices are very sweet.