“Must I sleep there?” cried Nello. It was not so much the little bed—the close neighbourhood of the other boys—that appalled him; but where was there a window for his bird? “Mayn’t I have that bed?” he said, pointing to one which stood near the window at the end of the room.
“I daresay,” said Mrs. Swan; “why that is for the head boy, and you are the least, and the last. It is only by a chance that there is room for you at all here.”
“But I don’t want to be here,” said Nello. “Oh, mayn’t I be by the window? The head boy hasn’t got a——. What would it matter to him? but I want to be there. I want to be at the window.”
“My little master, you’ll be where I choose to place you,” said Mrs. Swan, becoming irritated. “We allow no self-will, and no rebellion here.”
“But what shall I do with my——.” Nello did not venture to name the name of the bird. He crept up to the head of the little bed which was to be allotted to him, and surveyed the blank wall tearfully. There was but a very little space between him and the next bed, and he was in the middle of the room, the darkest part of it. Nello began to cry. He called upon Mary, and upon Martuccia, in his heart. Neither of them would suffer him to be treated so. “Oh, mayn’t I go to another room where there is a window?” he cried, through his tears.
“My word, that one is a stubborn one; you will have your hands full with him,” said Mrs. Swan, leaving Nello to have his cry out, which experience had taught her was the best way. She found her husband very serious, and full of care, thinking over the charge he had received.
“It’s a gentleman’s son, not one of the commoner sort,” he said; “but why they should have brought him to me—such a little fellow—is more than I can see.”
Nello sat by his little bed and cried. His heart was full, and his little frame worn out. In the state of depression which had followed upon the delight of the morning, novelty had departed, and strangeness had come in its place—a very different matter; everything was strange wherever he turned: and no place to put his pigeon! By and by the vacant spaces would fill, and boys—boys whom he did not know—big boys, rough boys, and that head boy, who had the window—would pour in; and he had no place to put his bird.
Nello’s tears fell like summer rain upon the precious basket, till the storm had worn itself out. Then, first symptom of amelioration, his ear was caught by the rustle of the bird in the cage. He took it up, then placed it in his lap, then opened the cover a little way, and, entrancing moment! saw it—the glossy head, the keen little eye gleaming at him, the soft, ruffled feathers. It made a small dab at him as he peered in—and oh, how delighted, how miserable, how frightened was Nello! He drew back from the tiny assault, then approached his head closer, and took from his pocket a bit of his bread and butter, which he had saved on purpose. Then he sat down on the floor, a small creature, scarcely visible, hidden between the beds, betraying himself only by the reverberation of the sobs which still shook his little bosom from time to time, entranced over his bird. The pigeon gurgled its soft coo, as it picked up the crumbs. The little boy, after his trouble, forgot everything but this novel delight; a thing all his own, feeding from his hand already, looking up at him sidelong, with that glimmer of an eye, with a flutter towards him if it could but have got loose. No doubt when he set it free it would come upon his shoulder directly. Nello lost himself and all his grief in pleasure. He forgot even that he had not a window in which to hang his bird.
By and by, however, there came a rush and a tramp of feet, and eleven big boys, earthy and hot from the field where they had been working, came pouring in. They filled the room like a flood, like a whirlwind, catching Nello upon their surface as the stream would catch a straw. One of the big, hobnailed fellows stumbled over him as he sat on the floor.