“Why, we shall be just like wild birds,” said my mother joyfully, “with nests outside in the fresh air. What lovely, strong young ones we shall have! It has been a trifle hot in the bird-room in summer.”
My poor little mother had felt the heat terribly through the latter part of the summer, but that had not prevented her from doing her duty by her second family of young ones. They were very interesting little fledglings—three male birds, and three hen-birds, and strange to say my naughty brother Green-Top was as kind to them as he had been unkind to me.
It is no easy matter to feed six hearty young canaries, and it was the prettiest sight in the world to see him fly to the dish of egg food, stuff his beak and hurry to the nestlings with it. He was a great help to my parents. He was the only young canary in the bird-room that helped his parents feed new babies, and the old birds gave him great credit for it.
He would not let me go near the nest. I had politely offered to help him, but he told me in an angry way that I was a rover and despised my home, and if I did not get out, he would pick at my eyes and blind me for life.
“Don’t mind him, darling, darling,” sang my dear mother, who never forgot me. Norfolk, my father, paid no attention to me now. A steely look came into his eyes whenever I went near him, and one day he sang coldly at me, “Who are you, who are you?” though he knew quite well I was his son.
Green-Top was his favorite now. My brother just loved our father and perched near him at night, and was so attentive to him that the old birds said, “That young one will never mate. He loves his parents too well. He will always live with them.”
I never dared sing in the bird-room now, for if I did Green-Top always pulled my tail or looked down my throat. These are great tricks with canaries, to take the conceit out of a bird they think vain. Often when in the gladness, of my heart at getting back into the bird-room I would burst into song, Green-Top would steal behind me and tweak my tail severely, and
if he was busy about something, he would wink at one of my cousins to do it for him.
A terrible trouble, a most unspeakable and dreadful trouble, came upon us as a family and poisoned our happiness that winter. My beautiful mother Dixie, who had been allowed to have too many nests and raise too many nestlings in her short life, sickened and died. I shall never forget seeing her fail from day to day. First she had asthma and sat gasping for breath, with her beak wide open. Our Mary did everything for her. She gave her iron tonic and different medicines, but nothing did any good. Day by day her poor little body looked like a puff-ball, and her quick, short gasps for breath were most painful to hear. Her voice failed, and she had to take castor oil and paregoric and glycerine and had rock-candy in her drinking water.
“It is no use,” said our Mary one day. “My dear Dixie, you will have to go, but I think there is a little bird heaven somewhere where you will be happy, and will not suffer any more, and some day all your little family will go to it, and fly about gaily with you ever after.”