Subject to Vanity

by Margaret Benson

Gypsy’s cage used to be put all day on the window-sill; and I began after a time to be aware that he was liable to be seized by sudden agitations, when he fluttered backwards and forwards in his cage, with a quick, excited note. A few days more and the cause of this agitation became apparent; for a little goldfinch, a hen goldfinch I suppose, came and sat upon the window-sill.

The intimacy rapidly improved; the goldfinch would come into the room and sit on Gypsy’s cage; it made friends with a siskin and a bullfinch in the next room, and would roost in an empty cage there at night.

Gypsy’s wing-feathers were clipped, so that I could let him walk about out of doors. When I took him into the garden he called to his friend, and the goldfinch dropped down by his side to take a walk with him. Other goldfinches came sometimes, but only one constantly and fearlessly when I was there. One day I remember Gypsy walking down the path in front of me accompanied by three friends.

But it was not long before there was a signal of danger. The house we were in was having some rooms added on to it, and there were workmen about. One day when I was sitting in my room and Gypsy was having an At Home, there was a little sound outside, and a limed stick was gently shoved towards my window-sill. Of course I remonstrated, and of course I was told by the workmen that they had done it entirely for my sake, because they thought that I should like to have the bird in a cage,—I could have caught the bird ten times over if I had wished it.

But this, I fear, must after all have been the end of the love-lorn bird; for it disappeared suddenly, and I never saw it again.

For a long time Gypsy had no society but mine and the canaries. He did not care for canaries, and he was mostly in a passion with me. But after some time a pair of goldfinches was given to us, much attached to each other and otherwise uninteresting. One day I put Gypsy in their cage to see what would happen. In three minutes a complete change had been worked in that happy home. Gypsy was sitting with the little lady on her perch, whispering sweet nothings into her ear, while her disconsolate spouse sat by himself on the perch below, meditating pistols for two and coffee for one.

I will do Gypsy the justice to say that he admired himself quite as much as anyone else admired him. When he was held to the looking-glass he did not fight his reflection as some animals do, he fell deeply in love with it, and whispered to it in a tiny, sweet, wooing voice, until it was obscured by a little circle of damp breath on the glass.

Some one may ask why, if Gypsy was so universally attractive and so extremely susceptible, I did not provide him with a wife to himself. Simply because it would have been no good; Gypsy was a mere flirt; he never would have had nests and eggs and brought up families like other birds; he was a mule-bird, and they cannot be domestic.

Gypsy had one last flickering of flirtation. I took his cage out one day into a London garden, and sat with him under a tree, and he sang loud; suddenly I heard a sound very unfamiliar in London, the voice of a bird which was hopping about on the tree above. I looked up, and through the leaves I could see that it was a little goldfinch; but it was shy and flew away.