“Hello,” she greeted. “If you’re the boy that ate the lollypop and got run into, I know all about you. I’m the doctor’s little girl. I came to help you make a bird window—bird windows are my specialty, you know,” she laughed.
“I’ve got some money, if you need to buy anything,” Billy announced. “I want a real jim dandy window! You’ll make me a nice one, won’t you? I like birds and animals, don’t you? I never had any pets but I always did want a bird or something. Maybe I can tame the birds when they come to my window. How do you fix it?”
“Well, you have to have a shelf of some kind—a box that is shallow will make that,” explained the doctor’s little girl. “I brought some nails and a hammer with me and I brought a lump of suet that the cook gave me. She sometimes won’t give it to me but this time I told her about you and she gave it without another word. She says she’s sorry for you and so’m I. I’m going to fix you up a splendid window.”
The doctor’s little girl thrust up the sash of Billy Williams’ window. “I’m awfully hard up,” she pursued, “or I’d have bought some sunflower seed to bring with me. You ought to have sunflower seed to sprinkle on your bird-shelf, for it brings the chickadees and the purple finches and ever so many other kinds of birds. The woodpeckers come for the suet and if you have peanuts, beautiful big blue jays will come and carry them off. Could I have twenty cents to buy sunflower seed, do you suppose? It costs ten cents a pound at the druggist’s.”
Billy showed her the penny bank and they shook it and shook it till there was really more money than twenty cents—“If it hadn’t been for the bank, I’d have been running about now,” Billy grumbled. “That bank’s got to give me something nice now anyhow!”
“Well, I’m shaking it to punish it,” laughed the doctor’s little girl. “I’m shaking it ever so hard. I don’t believe it likes to be shaken. You did have ever so much money in it. I don’t wonder that you wanted the lollypop!”
She slipped the money into her purse and went off to make purchases. Billy told her to get anything that the money would buy. He wanted a bird window that would be the best anybody could have. He waited anxiously for her to come back and when she came, her arms were full.
Billy had to laugh. She had a small evergreen tree that she had bought for thirty-five cents. She had two pounds of sunflower seed that had cost twenty cents—oh, ever so much seed comes for that price and it will last a long time, too. She had a shallow grocery box that was long and flat and without any cover. It was about the length of Billy’s window ledge. She had a package that came from the ten cent store. When it was undone, it showed two tin strainers at five cents apiece. Now, what did all this mean?
The doctor’s little girl rolled up her sleeves and put on Billy Williams’ mother’s blue gingham apron. First, she took the shallow grocery box and nailed it to the window ledge. Billy was surprised to see that the doctor’s little girl could drive a long nail almost as well as he himself!
“That’s the bird-shelf,” she explained. “You sprinkle sunflower seed on it every day. The birds can light on its rim. Some days you’ll have as many as twenty at a time. The chickadees are darling and the purple finches are beautiful and they sing too.”