“You two are forever talking about that little brown bird,” she said, “I have to think of other things: I think whether there is wood for the fire and whether there is enough food in the house. You, too, Louisa and Angelina, you have mouths to feed!”
It was true. There was not always enough. Louisa and Angelina knew it. They could well understand the little brown bird’s joy at finding plenty to eat. It was good to have a hearty meal. Then one day, before it was time to go to school, Louisa and Angelina missed the little brown bird! “Did you see him this morning?” they asked each other. “Maybe he has gone away and is making a nest.”
But the next day came and no little brown bird appeared. Another morning passed and still no little brown bird! On their way home from school that day Louisa whispered to Angelina that she was going to hunt for him. And when Maria was busy, they crept out of the door and, barefoot in the cold mud, they searched for nests by the roadside bushes.
They found none.
The search led them hither and thither on and on up the hill near the brown house and toward a cluster of cottages where the Irish immigrants had formed a colony. Maria, shaking her finger violently, as she did when she wished to enforce a command, insisted always that neither Angelina nor Louisa should make friends or play with the Irish children there. “They throw stones—they are badly brought up,” she declared.
Up to this time, good little Angelina and Louisa had never come so close to these other tenements. But they wandered closer in their search for the little brown bird. It was Angelina who first spoke to the little boys that they met flinging stones there. “Have you seen a little brown bird?” she asked. “It might be our little bird that we have lost. Have you seen one anywhere, perhaps?”
But the little boys simply made up faces and stuck out their tongues. No, they had not seen any brown birds to tell of—nor did they care. They would have thrown stones, had not a little smile from Angelina prevented it. Angelina felt sorry for the bad little boys who were rude.
Louisa drew her away. “Come, Ange, we will look in another place,” she urged. “If he has been hurt we will find him, maybe. I do not think they have hurt him,” she comforted. But in her heart she feared it.
So they pattered back toward home through the black chilly mud, searching the roadside. Quite suddenly Louisa came upon him lying limp and cold under a tree by the way. He would never twitter or chirp again. He would never come to the window or eat from their fingers or build a nest in spring. The two little sisters sat there by the roadside and cried and then they carried the little brown bird home and cried some more. Maria stopped her work and tried to be comforting. There was little to say. She did not scold very hard about the trip abroad in bare feet.
They put him in the beautiful box that was Maria’s treasure—a box with a picture on its cover, a beautiful picture all red roses. They took him to a sunny spot near the roadside and gathered last autumn’s leaves to cover him. One could see the place from the window.