The children were the best of all. Not a bit of candy or cake did they get but what a bit was saved for me, and many a greasy or sticky little morsel that I just pretended to eat was laid before me.
It was curious about those children. They
were rather naughty with human beings, but ever since their cousin Mary allowed them to go in the bird-room, once a day with her, they had become nicer to birds and animals.
CHAPTER V
MY NEW FRIEND, CHUMMY HOLE-IN-THE-WALL
AS I have said before, a strange longing to be out of doors came over me as winter passed away and spring approached. I never wearied of sitting on the window ledges and watching the plucky little English sparrows who sometimes came to the bird-room window and talked over the news of the day with us.
Most of the canaries were very haughty with them, and looked down on them as inferior birds. So the sparrows rarely approached us, unless they had important news to communicate, when eagerness to hear what they had to say made the canaries forget to snub them.
That clever woman, Mrs. Martin, knew that I wished to get out in the street, and one day when there was a sudden thaw after very cold weather, she said to me, as I sat on her bedroom window sill, “I believe my little boy would like a fly out of doors.”
“Dear Missie, Missie, Missie,” I sang, “how sweet you are to me, how sweet!”
“Fly away, then,” she said, throwing up the window. “I don’t think the air is cold enough to hurt you.”