Billie hung her head. “I know too well what it feels like to be chased,” she said.
“You can’t see us up here on the wall very well, Billie,” I said. “You would have to stretch your neck to look up at us. Suppose we fly down, Chummy.”
“All right,” he said agreeably, so we flew to a pot of hyacinths on the table and crouched down with our feet on the nice warm earth and our breasts against the rim of the pot.
Billie jumped up in a big chair by the table to be near us, and began, “First of all, you mustn’t interrupt. It puts me out.”
“All right,” said the sparrow, “but what a spoiled dog you are! I don’t know another one in the neighborhood that is allowed to sit in any chair he or she chooses.”
Billie hung her head again, and I gave the sparrow a nudge. “Do be quiet. She’s sensitive on that subject.”
“It’s on account of my early training,” said
Billie at last. “There was nothing sacred to the poor people I was with. A bed or a chair was no better than the floor and I can’t get over that feeling. I have been whipped and whipped and reasoned with, but it’s of no use. I can’t remember.”
“It’s just like birds,” said the sparrow cheerfully. “What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. If I indulge a youngster and let him take the best place in the nest, I can’t get him out of it when he’s older.”
“Begin, Billie,” I said, “we’re waiting, and, Chummy, don’t interrupt again. It’s quite a long story, and the afternoon is going, and Missie will soon be home.”