He always wound up with a “Chew, chew, chew!” rendered as vigorously as if he had teeth. I knew he was lonely, for he absolutely and contemptuously refused to associate with his far-away cousin, the Brazilian, and there was no other bird suitable for him in the aviary. So I sent to Boston for a mate for him, and also for one for the Brazilian. I called the Virginian, Ruby, and the Brazilian, Red-top. I regretted the latter name. I should have chosen one to better express the smart, elegant appearance, the pretty manners, and shy, aristocratic ways of this attractive foreigner.
I loved Ruby, but I adored Red-top, and I liked his song better. There was not so much of it, and it was not so loud, but he sang nearly all the time. I called him a conversational singer, for as he walked or ran over the earth—he rarely hopped—he kept his pretty head moving from side to side, and talked or sang constantly to himself. “Dee, dee, dee!” he would say, as he picked up a piece of sand. “Dee, dee, dee!” he would go on, as his runs brought him within reach of an orange or a grape, then he would stop an instant to extract some juice with his strong conical beak.
He had a pair of very smooth dark legs and claws, and always reminded me of a famous French singer who wears long black gloves with her evening gowns. Red-top’s elegance was really Parisian, and we all know Brazilians are fond of Paris; then he had a quick, sharp way of saying something that sounded like the French “voyons!”
I never became tired of watching this pretty bird, and would praise him unstintedly to his face, for it never seemed to spoil him. The bold Ruby, on the contrary, if too much petted, would attack some smaller bird, and “show off” as spoiled children do.
I studied Red-top and found out his tastes. He was a great dandy, and extravagantly fond of a mirror. I put a hand-glass in the aviary, and he spent half of his time in front of it, talking, singing, bowing, tapping it with his beak, and running to and fro before it on his trim dark legs. He thought there was a bird in the glass, for he often paused in his song and listened as if to say, “Why don’t you respond, bird in the glass?”
One day he made a nest before it and slept in it every night with his beak touching the glass. I tried moving the glass and nest from place to place, and he would follow them wherever they went. Thinking to please him, I put a rose-colored lining in the nest. It was not so bright as his crest, but it drove him far away, and I had to take it out.
“How pleased he will be to see another Brazilian,” I said to myself, and in a few weeks I had the felicity of opening another traveling-cage and allowing another Brazilian to step out and confront my elegant Red-top. At first they looked exactly alike to me, except that the new bird’s plumage was rumpled in appearance, causing me to name her Touzle.
I soon found that Touzle was gentle and timid in disposition, her eyes were smaller, or rather she kept her eyelids closer together than Red-top did, and that altogether she was one of the best and sweetest birds in my aviary—and how did Red-top treat her?
Alas! The bird world, like the human world, is full of surprises. Instead of flying to her with joy and greeting her as a beloved friend and companion from the far-off Brazilian country, Red-top began to beat her constantly, rudely, and systematically.
“Why, Red-top; I am ashamed of you,” I said in amazement. “What do you mean by beating that beautiful, gentle bird?”