“Why, of course she’ll fuss; how could she get any fun out of it if she didn’t? But she’s fussed all she’s going to right now; and next time I’ll make some more petticoats, or cut down her fifth-best winter coat for one of the little missionaries to wear on the Fourth of July. ——Don’t look so horrified, Mammy Lil; you know I’ll never let it get in the box! Now lie still like a good child till I fix your supper. I’m going to feed you myself,” and she fluttered away, singing under her breath.
April 5th. Caro is in the window-seat, feather-stitching the missionary petticoats, with one eye on the birds in the yard. The jays have always roused her special ire; and yesterday one flew to the hackberry, in plain sight, with a little naked nestling dead in his wicked bill, tucked it coolly under his toes against the bark, and devoured it before our eyes. This morning, in the intervals of courtship, they have diverted themselves with crumb-snatching. They sit on a limb above the scattered morsels where a dozen or more birds are feasting. There is bread in abundance for all, but the jays love hectoring even better than eating. One will watch till some bird picks up a crumb, and then drop like lead upon his astonished victim. The unfortunate drops the crumb, of course; and before he collects his scattered wits the jay is back aloft with the morsel safe under his toes, picking leisurely. Caro sat laughing and scolding till a little red-brown wren flew down and was pounced upon in a twinkling. The wren dropped his crumb, but turned upon the bully with lightning quickness and a volcanic explosion of wrath utterly out of proportion to his size. The big bird, amazed at the onset, flew up to his perch in a panic, and Caro clapped her hands.
“Oh, grand! grand!” she cried; “don’t I wish Milly Wood were here to see! I told her yesterday if she’d lay Cousin Jason out she could manage him: and just look at that blessed wren.”
“Milly isn’t a wren, though,” I said: “she hasn’t a glimmering of the wren’s gift of speaking his mind. Look at the wood-thrush, dear; you see the difference? When the wood-thrush turns on a jay, I’ll have hopes of Grace and Milly—and not before.”
The two wood-thrushes have been in the yard for days, the shyest, gentlest of creatures, ready to fly off at the flutter of a leaf. They have not touched the crumbs yet, but hop nearer every day. The jay watched one of them extract a worm from the soil, however, and lit upon him plummet-fashion. The wood-thrush dropped his half-swallowed morsel and fled in a panic to the black ash, where my glasses revealed him, his breast feathers bristling with terror, a mere puff-ball of fear.
“That’s Milly,” I said.
“But, Mammy Lil, anything can run a jay if it will only stand up to him,” persisted Caro; “I don’t see why Milly submits to it. She can’t ask Mr. Lincoln to a single meal. When he comes out in the afternoon he has to motor all the way to Chatterton for his supper and then go back; and Cousin Jay goes in the parlor when he does come, and glares at him and looks at his watch, and yawns—he’s simply insufferable. I’ve asked them both over here; Milly can stay all night, you know. But she says she won’t dare to come often, or Uncle Jason won’t like it. Not like it, indeed! I wish he belonged to me—I’d ‘uncle’ him!—There, that petticoat’s all ready to proclaim Cousin Jane’s thriftiness in clothing our dear missionaries on the frontier. I’ll make them for the sake of family peace: but I’m blessed if I’ll take them to church to be packed: she can escort her offering herself.”
April 8th.