What should I do? A bird brought up as I had been, I reflected, could never descend to work for a living, as the sparrows did, and other wild birds which I had met among the trees. Some of them ate insects—fact, I assure you—and one red-headed bird, wearing a coat of many gay colors, simply tapped and tapped on a tree with his hard bill whenever he wanted his dinner.
"Come in," said the bug, innocently, who was making his home between the bark and the tree, "come in."
Nobody appearing, the bug ventured out to see who his caller might be.
"Good morning," grinned the woodpecker, and then politely gobbled the poor bug up.
But I was not brought up that way. I could not eat bugs, neither could I rummage in the garbage boxes as the sparrows did. Oh, how unwise of me, and how ungrateful to run away from a home where my every need was faithfully served by a kind mistress. Like the prodigal I would return. Surely I would know the house, the very window from which I had fled. Yes, I would start at once, and off I flew in the direction which I thought I had come.
But, alas! how alike all the houses in that neighborhood seemed. Vainly did I fly down on many a window-sill and peer in. No mistress' face greeted me, no empty cage swung idly between the curtains. At length, faint from hunger and fatigue, I flew down and perched upon the railing of a porch where two ladies were sitting.
"You dear little thing," said one of the ladies—I want to say here that I am much smaller than the dark Hartz Mountain bird who sat for her picture—"I never saw a sparrow so tiny, or marked like you before."
"It's a canary, not a sparrow," said the other lady, "doubtless, somebody's lost pet," and she held out her hand, and chirped and talked to me very much like my lost mistress had done.
"Poor little wanderer," she at length said, as I looked at her, but made no effort to fly away, "I have an idea you came to us for food," and then she went into the house and shortly returned with a cage in the bottom of which she scattered seed, placing it upon the ground very close to me.
"Rape, hemp and canary," I chirped, "the seed I am used to," and down I at once flew, hopped into the cage, and, the next moment, was made prisoner.