The mornings that came after the little brown bird went away, Ange and Louisa tried to enthuse over paper dolls that father had brought them, cut from a Sunday newspaper—but somehow they always drifted toward the window, even though they knew he would never come again.
And so time passed, long mornings, school and home-coming. It began to be spring. Grass came by the roadside bushes that showed wee buds to break into soft colors. Maria left the kitchen door open of a morning and Angelina sat on the stone before the doorway, thinking. Her eyes rested for a moment upon the place where they had placed the little brown bird under the leaves. She called to Louisa, “Oh, come—come! Let us see what the bird-flower is! We put him under the leaves in the earth, and there is grown from him a flower! It is a bird-flower—a bird-flower, Louisa!”
They ran out to look at the little flower that grew over the spot where the little brown bird had been. “Is it so, Ange?” asked Louisa, willing to believe.
Full of excitement, they ran back to busy Maria. “Our little brown bird is grown to be a bird-flower,” they cried. “Come, Maria, come quickly and see! It is such a pretty flower, all like a star and white!”
Maria shook her head. “There are no bird-flowers,” she declared. But she followed them out to the sunny spot where the grass was growing green over the dead leaves and she thought it a beautiful flower. She let Louisa and Angelina talk of their bird-flower, but she smiled to herself.
But why should not little birds who have been stoned waken, with the flowers, in the spring sunlight? Louisa and Angelina believed in their bird-flower and they wondered, too, if all spring flowers came from little birds. At night when their father came home, they asked him. At first he laughed and did not understand. Maria explained.
“They are children,” she smiled, “and they think a bird is like a bulb or seed. They cannot understand the difference. They watched the little brown bird all winter, and Louisa gave it crusts that she ought to have eaten. And they found it by the roadside where the rude children up the hill had killed it. We put the little bird under the leaves there and now that a flower has come in the place, they call it their bird-flower, father!”
Then he put a hand on each little head. “My little girls,” he said, “is it true—then call it your bird-flower if it comforts you. I will tell you what I think: they say that there are no little birds in heaven, for their souls do not live, they say. Yet I know there are children up there and that wherever the children are there must be birds to sing to them—even the angel children would want them. And I know that your mother would miss them, too, were they not there.”
In the stillness they heard a song sparrow trill from the bushes on the hillside.
“I would like to have our little brown bird sing to our mother,” Angelina suggested softly.