Sorry?
Well, really I don't know. My period of freedom had been so brief, and attended with such anxiety and fear, that I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. The next day, however, I knew that my lines had indeed fallen in pleasant places. My first mistress had been kind, but oh, how much more tender and thoughtful the new one proved to be!
"I was a helpless little creature," she said, "and upon her depended my entire comfort and happiness." Never for one day did she neglect me. Though my regular bill-of-fare was bird-seed, yet she varied it as she did her own. Cracker, lettuce, apples, grapes, cherries, sugar, and always in the summer, pepper-grass. If you little folks have a canary never fail, I beseech you, to give them of the latter all they want to eat. It costs nothing and may be gathered in any vacant lot fresh every day.
What pleasure so kind a mistress could find in keeping me in a little gilt cage, I could not see, for there were screens in the window, and even if there had not been I don't believe I should have cared to fly away. Something in my appearance one day suggested the thought to her, I am sure, for looking at me earnestly, she said:
"You are not happy, my birdie, I fear. Neither would I be, cooped up in a cage like that," and so she opened wide the door and out I flew, never to be a prisoner again—till, well, I will not speak of that just here, but keep it for the close.
What famous times we did have after that, to be sure. Whenever I felt lonesome down I'd fly upon the desk where my mistress sat writing. She would pretend not to see me till I had hopped upon the very sheet over which her pen was gliding.
"Why birdie!" she would then cry, as though very much astonished, and off I'd fly, as she made a dash for me, to the window where I would hide behind the ruffle of the sash curtain.
"Cheep, cheep," I'd cry, just as you little folks cry "whoop," when all is ready, "cheep, cheep."
"Where can my birdie be?" she would say after awhile, dropping her pen. "Where can she be?" and then she would look here and there, till presently approaching my hiding-place, out I'd fly, with a gurgle, into an adjoining room, where I'd again crouch behind the curtain. Between you and me I believe she knew all the time where I was hiding and only pretended to search for me here and there. Anyway it was capital fun, and I never tired of it, though mistress did.
"I can't play with you any more," she would say, "you quite tire me out," and then she would go to writing again and so our game of "hide and seek" would end for that day.