Now I must end my pretty little song,
You can’t be bored, for it isn’t very long.”
“Fine!” said Sammy-Sam, clapping his hands, while I glanced at Chummy, who was sitting listening to it with a very happy sparrow face.
“Good boy,” said Chummy, in a bird whisper. Then he said briskly, “But I have no time to listen to soft words, for I must help Jennie with the nest-building.”
Jennie came along at this minute, such a pretty, dusky, smart little sparrow and very businesslike. She gave Chummy a reproachful glance, as she flew by with her beak full of tiny lengths of white soft twine that she had found outside the flying cage on our roof. She thought we were wasting time.
“And I will go and help with my nest in the big new cage on the sitting-room wall,” I said. “Daisy is turning out to be a fine nest builder. I can’t coax her away from it.”
The windows were all open to the lovely warm air, so I could make a bee-line for my nest. Oh, what a comfort little Daisy was, and is, to me! She is the sweetest, most companionable, gentle little canary I ever saw, and she never makes fun of me as the bird-room canaries do. She thinks whatever I do is just perfect, and she never grumbles if I go to have a little fly outside and am late coming home.
“How are you getting on, dearie, dearie?” I sang, as I found her working away at a heap of nest lining that Mrs. Martin had given us.
“Nicely, nicely,” she said, in her funny, husky little voice. She has been allowed to hang near a cold window in winter, and it has hurt her throat. In summer, she was nearly baked by being kept all the time in the sun, and I tell her she must be a very tough little canary, or she would have been dead before this.
“If you would just whistle a pretty little tune to me, Dicky-Dick,” she said, “while I work, and not interfere; I know just how these tiny,