They all put their heads on one side and listened,
and it was amusing to hear what they said when I had finished my tale of woe. This was the substance of it, “Better stay home, better stay home; the world is bad, is bad to birds, bad, bad, bad.”
“But the bird-room life seems narrow to me,” I said. “You don’t know how narrow it is till you get out of it.”
Green-Top had been looking at me quite kindly till I said this, when he called out, “He’s making fun of us, making fun, fun, fun.”
Norfolk, my father, began to bristle up at this, so did my cousins and my young brothers, Pretty-Boy and Cresto and Redgold. They seemed to take my remarks more to heart than the birds that weren’t related to me.
My uncle Silver-Throat, however, slipped up to me and whispered, “You talk too much. Hold your tongue,” and fortunately just at this moment our Mary, who had been filling seed dishes, created a sensation that turned their thoughts from me.
“Birdies,” she said, “western New York is sending us a lovely warm breeze over old Lake Ontario. I think we can celebrate this warm
day by opening the screen into our new flying cage.”
What an excitement that made! The birds all twittered and chattered, and flew round her, as she went to the big window and, unhooking the wire screen, allowed us to go out to the sun-flooded roof.
Despite my tailless condition, I was the first out and got a good rap from my father for it, for as the oldest inhabitant of the bird-room, he should have taken precedence of every one.