More Tales of the Birds

by W. Warde Fowler

The air up there was even worse than down in the street. It was still drizzling, and the fine rain, clogged with the smoke from countless crooked chimney-pots, seemed to thicken and congeal upon every object that it met. It clung to the Linnet’s feathers, it made his eyes smart, and his heart palpitate fiercely; he must rest again somewhere, and then try his wings once more.

Fluttering over those horrible chimney-pots, he spied at last a roof where there was an attempt at a little garden: a box of sallow-looking mignonette, and two or three pots of old scarlet geraniums. Lintie dropped upon the mignonette, which refreshed him even with its sickly sweetness, and for a moment was almost happy. But only for a moment; suddenly, from behind one of the geranium-pots there came a swift soft rush of grey fur, a lightning-stroke of a velvet paw, a struggle in the mignonette, and Lintie emerged with the loss of three white-edged tail-feathers, while a pair of angry yellow eyes followed his scared flight into the grimy air.

The very fright seemed to give his wings a sudden convulsive power. Where they were carrying him he could not tell, and the loss of three of his steering feathers mattered little. Over the crooked chimneys, over dismal streets and foul back-yards he flew, till the air seemed to clear a little as a large open space came in sight. There were tall fine houses round this space, but all the middle part of it was full of trees and shrubs, and even flower-beds. The stems of the trees were dead-black with smoke, and the shrubs looked heavy and sodden; but yet this was the best thing that Lintie had seen for many long and weary days. Even the sounds as well as sights revived him, for surely, heard through the roar of the great street hard by, there came the cooing of Woodpigeons,—the very same soothing sound that used to come up to the Downs from the beech-woods, that hung on their steep sides.

He flew down into one of the thick shrubs, found a way in, and hid himself. He seemed as secure as in his native gorse-bush; and as it was dark in there and he was tired, and evening was not far distant, he put his head under his wing and went to sleep.

He had not slept very long when he was waked up by a sparrow coming into the bush and beginning to chatter loudly. The next minute there came another, then a third, a fourth, half-a-dozen together, all chattering and quarrelling so noisily that for the moment they did not notice the stranger. But more and more came bustling in, and the din and the hubbub were so overwhelming that Lintie felt he must go at all risks. He moved, was detected, and instantly pounced upon.

“Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing in our roosting-bush? What do you want here? No vulgar vagrants here! Take that, and that, and that!”

So they all shouted in chorus, pecking at him the while, and the noise was so unusual that two young men of the law, looking out of a first-floor window in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, took their pipes out of their mouths and listened.

“It’s all over with me at last,” thought Lintie; but he made one brave effort to escape, found his way out of the bush, and flew into the open roadway, pursued by half a hundred sparrows.

“What in the world is up?” said one of the men up in the window. “By George, it’s murder they’re at,” he cried, as he saw a whirling, screaming cloud of sparrows on the ground below him, and their victim resigning himself to inevitable death. In a moment his pipe was on the floor, and he himself was in the street. The sparrows flew away swearing; Lintie crouched on the ground, a heap of dishevelled feathers.

The student took him gently in his hand and carried him into the house.