As I sat, a weak young thing, on the edge of my nest, looking down into the room, it seemed to me that there were a great many birds flying about, and I should never be able to tell one from the other. However, I soon learned who
they all were. First of all, there was my lovely mother Dixie, an American canary, with dainty whirls of feathers on her wings, my golden colored father Norfolk, my father’s sister Silkie, her roller canary mate Silver-Throat, who was a tiny, mottled bird, with an exquisite voice, and about twenty other canaries of different breeds, some Australian parakeets, African love-birds, nonpareils, and indigoes, and in the nest beside me my little sister Cayenna and my brother Green-Top, so called from his green crest. I am a plainhead.
My mother told me a great many stories about all these other birds, but I will not put them down just now.
I must tell, though, about my naming. I had a trouble just as soon as my eyes opened. My big brother Green-Top was jealous of me. He is a larger, handsomer bird than I am, but even when we were babies my parents said that his voice would not be as good as mine. Just as soon as he got the use of his wings he began to beat me. My parents naturally stood up for me, because I am smaller and weaker and plainer looking. It was really surprising that I should turn out to be such an ordinary-looking
little bird, when I have such handsome parents.
Green-Top told me that the old birds in the room said I was the exact image of my grandmother Meenie, who was a very common little bird from very common stock, that Miss Mary Martin brought into the bird-room out of pity for her.
Well, anyway, our Mary Martin was not slow in finding out that I was set upon, and one day as she stood watching us, she said to me, “Come here, you golden baby. I haven’t named you yet.”
She held out her hand as she spoke, and I lighted on her shoulder and got a lump of sugar for being obedient.
“I like the way you stand up to that naughty brother of yours,” she said. “You are a little hero. I am going to call you Richard the Lion-Hearted and Dicky-Dick for short.”
All the birds were listening to her, and when she stopped speaking you could hear all over the room the funny little canary sounds, like question marks, “Eh! What! La! La! Now what do you think of that! Such a grand name for a little plainhead bird!”