But I should like to know, in the whole scheme of things, what is the recompense for the little deserted lover.
VI
JACK
FEW people know how different one bird is from another of the same kind. Of course we can see when one canary is green and one yellow and one crested; but few people know that some canaries have blue eyes, some brown, and some grey; or how different one canary is in intelligence and character from another.
Jack was a remarkably intelligent canary; one always felt him to be immensely superior to oneself. When he consented to sit on his swing and allow me to swing him, he always seemed to say, “This is a very childish game, but it appears to amuse you, and I am by nature indulgent.” He was often very angry with me and pecked me, but I was sure I deserved it. The only blemish I ever found in him was that he was rather unscrupulous and ill-tempered, but then he was so exceedingly superior that he had to find fault with the canaries and me sometimes.
Jack was very bright yellow, with a slim, trim figure. When he was about two years old a little wife was given to him. She was almost white, and they looked very pretty together. Her name was Thyrsis. We tried to call them Corydon and Thyrsis, but “Jack” suited him so well that we were not able to change it, so they remained rather inharmoniously “Jack and Thyrsis” to the end of their lives.
I always used to turn Jack and Thyrsis out of their cage when I was cleaning it. One morning I did not see that the window of the room opposite was open. They flew round the room together, then coming to the open door they darted out of it, into the next room and straight to the window. One instant they rested on the window-sill, then like a flash of sunlight and moonlight they were out into the sunny garden and trees beyond. All that day I haunted the garden, too anxious to cry, carrying their cages about, in the vain hope that they might be hungry or thirsty and want to come back; once I thought I saw a flash of gold, but night fell and still the birds were out. The next day we sent the town-crier round shouting out a reward of five shillings for them, and the day following Thyrsis was brought back to me in a paper bag, much exhausted but not materially worse.
I did not hear of Jack for five months.
Then a boy who lived near and kept canaries heard for the first time of my loss, and he sent me a canary which some months ago had come through the open window and settled on his own bird’s cage. Of course it was Jack. He had not forgotten his way of coming towards me with wings outspread, uttering the funny scolding noise from which he got his name.
Now by this time Jack and Thyrsis were come to years of discretion, and it was thought that they ought to build and have young. So they were provided plentifully with horsehair and cottonwool, and given a small round basket in one of the cages, and we put their two cages together, opening the door between.