One day he sat drooping on his perch, and refused to be enticed away from it. He even declined the plump crickets Fred offered him in hopes of tempting his appetite.
The next morning he was found dead under his perch. He was mourned sincerely by the whole family, from grandma down, and we buried him with great ceremony under his favorite post-oak.
Tom sodded his grave, Josie planted a “mourning bride” over it, and Fred put up a shingle for a headstone, with this verse on it, which we all thought very beautiful:
“Handy-spandy, Jack-a-Dandy
Loves plum-cake and sugar candy.”
[This Story began in No. 15.]