"You'd better say 'Who!' Why who are you, yourself, you queer old Wonder-Eyes?"
Then she woke Biddy, who was dreadfully frightened, and called up the butler, who caught the owl, and put him in a cage.
This strange bird was always rather ill-natured and gruff, to everybody but Minnie—he seemed to take kindly to her, from the first. So he was called "Minnie's pet," and nobody disputed her right to him. He would take food from her little hand and never peck her; he would perch on her shoulder and let her take him on an airing round the garden; and sometimes he would sit and watch her studying her lessons, and look as wise and solemn as a learned professor, till he would fall to winking and blinking, and go off into a sound sleep.
Minnie grew really fond of this pet, grave and unsocial as he was; but she always called him by the funny name she had given him first—"Old Wonder-Eyes!"
In the winter time little Minnie was taken ill, and she grew worse and worse, till her friends all knew that she was going to leave them very soon. Darling little Minnie was not sorry to die. As she had loved everybody and every creature that God had made, she could not help loving God, and she was not afraid to go to Him when He called her.
The day before she died, she gave all her pets to her brothers and sisters, but she said to her mother—"You take good care of poor old Wonder-Eyes—for he'll have nobody to love him when I am gone."
The owl missed Minnie very much; whenever he heard any one coming, he would cry "Who!" and when he found it wasn't his friend, he would ruffle up his feathers, and look as though he felt himself insulted. He grew crosser and crosser every day, till there would have been no bearing with him, if it had not been for the memory of Minnie.
The next time I saw the old owl, sitting glaring and growling on his perch, I understood why he was so unhappy and sullen. My heart ached for him—but so did the finger he had bitten; and I did not venture very near to tell him how sorry I was for him. When I think of him now, I don't blame him, but pity him for his crossness; and I always say to myself—"Poor old Wonder-Eyes!"