I have heard strangers utter shrieks of laughter at this peculiar pursuit of the robin by the sparrow. When these two birds grew older it was just as amusing, for then they flew from place to place.
CHAPTER VI
DIXIE AND TARDY
When Dixie was about three weeks old he became afflicted by a cough. He had a mania for bathing. I could not keep him out of the water dishes. He was soaked from morning till night, and finally he sounded like a consumptive robin. I tried shutting him in a cage, but that fretted him; and when he came out he was more anxious to bathe than ever. The cough hung about him for weeks, and I made up my mind that I was going to lose him, but he finally recovered from it.
I used to hear him coughing at night, for I slept in a room opening off the roof-veranda. I would put my head out the doorway in the morning, and say, “Well, Dixie, how is the cough?” He knew quite well that I was addressing him, and would give a little croupy bark in answer. I became so fond of him, and his cough clung to him so late in the season, that I resolved to keep him. Not so with the sparrow. I thought it would be better to let him go, and one day I put him outside the wire netting.
I never saw a more surprised bird. He had forgotten the nest on the side of the house, the tiny, sooty parent-birds. The robin was his father, his mother, his world. He ran to and fro over the wire netting, he looked down at his friend, at the nice food and the fresh seeds, and his regret was so keen, that I said consolingly, “If you keep that up, little fellow, I will let you come back again.”
I always keep a certain amount of food outside the aviary for street sparrows and pigeons, so the little exile did not suffer, and in time he forgot the robin, and only occasionally visited him.
Dixie grew and flourished, and is now a very fine-looking bird. A few weeks ago he began to practise some fine rolling notes that promise a fine singer. He stopped singing when I put him into the warm basement for the winter. He was very indignant, and shook his tail as he talked to me about taking him off the roof-veranda.
I remonstrated with him, and told him of his weak throat, and that I wished him to get perfectly strong during the winter, so that next spring he might fly away with the wild birds if he wished to do so. He looked as if he understood. He is a very intelligent bird, and when he wishes to dig worms that are beneath his reach, he lets me know it.
I found this out one evening, when I had forgotten to go at dusk and dig him his final supper. I had taken a book, and was lying on a sofa in the veranda-room, when I was aware that a very disconsolate little figure was staring at me through the glass.