My mother told us that we ought to be very happy little birds, for we were not in a cage where canaries are usually hatched, but in a good-sized bird-room, in a comfortable nest. This nest was a small wooden box, placed on a shelf high up on the wall, and we could stand on the edge of it and look all about the room.
My mother also told us that we must love, next to our parents, the young girl who owned this bird-room and who came in many times a day to feed and water us and to see that we were all comfortable.
I shall never forget how I felt the first day I
rose up in our nest, stepped to the edge of our box, and looked about the bird-room.
It seemed enormous to me. I gasped and fell back in the nest. Then I looked again, and this time the sight did not make me feel so weak, and I straightened things out.
It was, or is, for I often visit it yet, a good-sized attic room, with one big window looking east, and a door opening into a hall. Standing two and three deep all round the room were rows of fir trees, straight but not very tall, and looking like little soldiers. They were in big pots of earth, and my mother told me that every few months they were taken out and fresh ones were put in. Running between the trees and resting on their branches were long, slender poles and perches, for fir branches are not usually very good to sit on. A bird likes a spreading branch, not one that hugs the tree.
In the middle of the room was a tiny fountain, with rock work round it. Night and day it murmured its pretty little song, and the birds splashed and bathed and played games in the shallow basin under it. There were not big birds in the room, so we did not need a deep bathing pool.
Beyond the fountain were the trays of green sods and dishes of food and seeds. Oh, what good things we had to eat, for as we were not caged birds, we could have quite rich food. Then we took so much exercise flying to and fro that it sharpened our appetites. I shall never forget the good taste of the egg food that I fed myself, and the bread and milk, the bits of banana and orange, and pineapple and apples, and pears and grapes—the little saucers of corn meal and wheat and oatmeal porridge, and the nice, firm, dry seeds—rape, millet, canary, hemp and sometimes as a great treat a little poppy seed.
The floor was covered with gravel and old lime, and once a month a man came in and swept it all up and put down a fresh lot.
Near the fountain was one small wicker chair, and there Miss Martin, the lame girl who owned us all, used to sit by the hour and watch us.