Still Katie, feeling that "a principle"--as she, à la mode, called her opinion--was involved in the bird's linguistic habits, would still maintain her cause with the same arguments, put in a variety of forms. "Na, na, Adam!" she would persistingly affirm, "I will say that for a sensible man an' an elder o' the kirk, ye're ower muckle ta'en up wi' that cratur'. I'll stick to't, that it's no' fair, no' richt, but a mockery o' man. I'm sure faither wadna hae pitten up wi't!"
"Dinna be flyting on the wee thing wi' its speckled breast and bonnie e'e. Charlie's bairn, ye ken--mind that!"
"I'm no flyting on him, for it's you, no' him, that's wrang. Mony a time when I spak' to you mysel', ye were as deaf as a door nail to me, and can hear naething in the house but that wee neb o' his fechting awa' wi' its lesson. Na, ye needna glower at me, and look sae astonished, for I'm perfect serious."
"Ye're speaking perfect nonsense, gudewife, let me assure you; and I am astonished at ye," replied Adam, resuming his work on the bench.
"I'm no sic' a thing, Adam, as spakin' nonsense," retorted his wife, sitting down with her seam beside him. "I ken mair aboot they jabbering birds maybe than yersel'. For I'll never forget an awfu' job wi' ane o' them that made a stramash atween Mr. Carruthers, our Auld Licht minister, and Willy Jamieson the Customer Weaver. The minister happened to be veesitin' in Willy's house, and exhortin' him and some neebours that had gaithered to hear. Weel, what hae ye o't, but ane o' thae parrots, or Kickcuckkoo birds--or whatever ye ca' them--had been brocht hame by Willy's brither's son--him that was in the Indies--and didna this cratur' cry oot 'Stap yer blethers!' just ahint the minister, wha gied sic a loup, and thocht it a cunning device o' Satan!"
"Gudewife, gudewife!" struck in the Sergeant, as he turned to her with a laugh, "O dinna blether yoursel', for ye never did it afore. They micht hae hung the birdcage oot while the minister was in. But what had the puir bird to do wi' Satan or religion? Wae's me for the religion that could be hurt by a bird's cracks! The cratur' didna ken what it was saying."
"Didna ken what it was saying!" exclaimed Katie, with evident amazement. "I tell ye, I've see'd it mony a time, and heard it, too; and it was a hantle sensibler than maist bairns ten times its size. I was watchin' it that day when it disturbed Mr. Carruthers, and I see'd it lookin' roon', and winkin' its een, and scartin' its head lang afore it spak'; and it tried its tongue--and black it was, as ye micht expek, and dry as ben leather--three or four times afore it got a soond out; and tho' a' the forenoon it had never spak a word, yet when the minister began, its tongue was lowsed, and it yoked on him wi' its gowk's sang, 'Stap yer blethers, stap yer blethers!' It was maist awfu' tae hear't! I maun alloo, hooever, that it cam' frae a heathen land, an wasna therefore sae muckle to be blamed. But I couldna mak' the same excuse for your bird, Adam!"
A loud laugh from Adam proved at once to Katie that she had neither offended nor convinced him by her arguments.
But all real or imaginary differences between the Sergeant and his wife about the starling, ended with the death of their boy. What that was to them both, parents only who have lost a child--an only child--can tell. It "cut up", as they say, the Sergeant terribly. Katie seemed suddenly to become old. She kept all her boy's clothes in a press, and it was her wont for a time to open it as if for worship, every night, and to "get her greet out". The Sergeant never looked into it. Once, when his wife awoke at night and found him weeping bitterly, he told his first and only fib; for he said that he had an excruciating headache. A headache! He would no more have wept for a headache of his own than he would for one endured by his old foe, Napoleon.
This great bereavement made the starling a painful but almost a holy remembrancer of the child. "I'm Charlie's bairn!" was a death-knell in the house. When repeated, no comment was made. It was generally heard in silence; but one day, Adam and his wife were sitting at the fireside taking their meal in a sad mood, and the starling, perhaps under the influence of hunger, or--who knows?--from an uneasy instinctive sense of the absence of the child, began to repeat rapidly the sentence, "I'm Charlie's bairn!" The Sergeant rose and went to its cage with some food, and said, with as much earnestness as if the bird had understood him, "Ay, ye're jist his bairn, and ye'll be my bairn tae as lang as ye live!"