“Fly to the North!” said Mr. Paroquet, with a shudder. “Fly to that horrid place where they have ice and snow the year round, with nothing green or bright, unless it’s that Christmas-tree you speak of! Pray, may I ask what kind of a tree that is? Is it like this magnolia, or that palm across the river, waving its fans in the breeze, or that orange-tree where you are sitting? And what kind of fruit does it bear? Icicles, or what?”
“Icicles!” And Mrs. Red laughed a merry, rippling kind of laugh which did me good to hear, for there was something very sad in the expression of her face, as if she had lost every friend she ever had. “Little you know of the North and what they have there. I’ll wager now you never heard of the place before.”
“Haven’t I, though?” Mr. Paroquet returned. “Didn’t one of those men from the North shoot the first Mrs. Paroquet one morning, just after breakfast, when she had gone out to take the air, and I was watching the three little birds in the nest? And didn’t he take her away to that place they call New York, and didn’t I hear afterward from a robin who comes down here every winter that they stuffed her, and put glass eyes in her, and strung her on a wire frame, and set her up in somebody’s parlor for an ornament, to be admired? My dead wife stuffed!—and such a time as I had with the little ones, who kept tumbling out of the nest, and who had such appetites that I was almost worn out with hunting things for them to eat, and was obliged to get another Mrs. Paroquet to help me do the work. Of course, I know about the North; but pray go on and tell me how you happened to be there, and why you are here again.”
“Yes,” returned Mrs. Red, “I’d like to tell some body. You remember my old home up the river, where the stream is so narrow that the boats almost touch the shore as they pass. There’s a splendid mass of yellow jasmine there, with lots of white dogwood, and Cherokee roses, and orange-trees, and palms, and magnolias, and water oaks, and there I had my nest, all covered up with flowers and leaves.
“I was very happy in my soft, warm nest, with Mr. Red, and four of the prettiest little birds you ever saw just hatched and wanting a mother’s care so badly. But one morning I saw coming down the river one of those big boats, full of people, who kept firing at the poor alligators sunning themselves in the warm spring air. At last the boat stopped, and some of the men got out and began to look around and fire at anything they saw; and one shot hit me under my wing, so that I could not fly, but dropped to the ground, half dead with pain and fright, but still having sense enough to be glad that it was I who was hurt instead of Mr. Red, who flew away to the top of the very tallest palm-tree in sight, where he sat and watched while a man picked me up and said:
“‘See, she is not dead; she is only wounded. I shall take her to my wife at the hotel. She has wanted a Red-bird so much.’
“What a hotel was, or where he meant to take me, I did not know, and for a time I must have been unconscious, for the next I knew I was on the boat covered over with a kind of wire screen, which kept me a prisoner. I could not get away, though I beat my head against the screen until it ached almost as hard as the place under my wing.
“Oh! what a change it was from my lovely nest among the oranges, and magnolias, and jasmines, to that dreadful wooden box in which they put me at the hotel, and which they called a cage. I think my new mistress meant to be kind to me, for she stroked my feathers very gently, and called me a ‘poor little thing,’ and brought me so many things to eat. But I could touch none of them, I was so home-sick and lonely, and my heart was aching so for the dear home up the river, and the little birdies there, who were sure to cry for me when the dark night came on and I was not there to shelter them. Would Mr. Red do it? I wondered, and I was afraid he wouldn’t; for, though the very best of all the Red-birds on the St. John’s, he did not always like to be bothered with the children, especially when he was tired and a little cross.”
“But he did, though,” interrupted Mr. Paroquet. “He took care of them for quite a while after you went away. I used to see him hunting worms, and seeds and things; and he’d go every day to the top of that palm you spoke of, and watch to see if you were not coming back. After awhile—well, you remember old Mr. Red, whose nest was near yours on a sour orange-tree, and whose pretty little grand-daughter, Spotted-Wing, with the shining feathers and so many airs, you did not fancy much?
“Yes, I remember her,” Mrs. Red answered very sadly, I thought, and Mr. Paroquet continued: