More Tales of the Birds

by W. Warde Fowler

There was no such plucky and untiring little woman as Selina in all our village. I say was, for I am thinking of years ago, at the time when her Starling came to her; but she is with us still, plucky and indefatigable as ever, but now a bent and bowed figure of a tiny little old woman, left alone in the world, but for her one faithful friend.

Untiring she has ever been, but never, so far as we can recollect, a tidy woman in her own cottage; perhaps it was natural to her, or more likely she fell in with the odd ways of her husband, a man whom no wife could ever have made tidy himself. They never had any children, and they did not see much of their neighbours; their society was that of pigs and fowls and cats, and such society, inside a cottage, is not compatible with neatness. These animals increased and multiplied, and man and wife were their devoted slaves. Their earnings were eaten up by the creatures, and nothing ever came of it so far as we could see; for it was seldom any good to ask Selina to sell you a fowl or a duck—she never had one ready to kill. We believed that they grew to a comfortable old age, and then died a natural death; and however that may be, it is true enough that neither Selina nor her husband could ever bear to part with them.

But the member of the household dearest to Selina’s heart was an old pony that lived in a little tumble-down hovel adjoining the cottage. Fan was perfectly well known to all the village, for she was always being taken out to graze on odd bits of grass which were the property of no one in particular, where, if kindly accosted, and in a good humour, she would give you her off fore foot to shake. Like Selina, she was of very small make; she had once been a pretty roan, but now wore a coat of many faded colours, not unlike an old carpet, well worn and ragged. Some people in the village declared that she was getting on for forty years old, and I am inclined to think they were not far wrong; but she was still full of life, and as plucky and hard-working as Selina.

Selina’s Starling.

Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Fan went up to Northstow with her master (I use the word by courtesy rather than as expressing their real relation to each other); she waited patiently at shops and market, had a dinner of hay at an inn, and returned with her little cart laden with parcels, which she had to distribute about the village before she turned in for the night. For many a year she performed these duties, and she was as well known in Northstow as she was in our village. But one day, some ten years ago, Selina’s husband fell down suddenly and died; and then for a short time there was a break in Fan’s visits to the market-town.

When the funeral was over, Selina returned to her solitary home, and busied herself as best she could. The fowls and ducks came trooping around her, anxious to be fed, and anxious for nothing else; they did not seem in the least to miss any one from the house. Selina turned them out of the kitchen, and quietly made up her mind that she could not now afford to keep them; they must go, with all their mess and litter, and she would begin to tidy up a bit at last. Then she went out to the hovel, for she heard a subdued whinnying there. Fan was the one creature in the place that had felt as she had; Fan had been wanting to know where the old man was, and had lost her spirits and her appetite. So she went and spent a full half hour with Fan, talked to her, made her comfortable, and cried a little on her rough old neck. At last she went once more into her kitchen, and thence into her tiny parlour, and after a little tidying up, she took the big family Bible from under the photograph book and the glass case with the stuffed kitten, and, laying it on the table, sat down and put on her spectacles.

She opened the book at haphazard, and began to read in the Old Testament, but she could not fix her attention. Her thoughts wandered far away, until she was suddenly roused by something falling down the chimney into the grate. It was a warm April day, and she was sitting without a fire; only in the kitchen was there a little bit of coal smouldering, to be woke up into life presently when it should be tea-time. She went and examined the grate; a few fragments of half-burnt stone had come down, and, as she looked, another bit and another fell with a rattle into the fender. Then there was a scuffle and a beating of wings; and a young starling suddenly shot down into the room, made straight for the window, banged himself against it, and fell to the ground.

Selina picked it up; it was only stunned, and soon revived in her hands. She took it gently, and put it into an old cage which lay among the lumber of the yard, brought the cage in again, set it on the table, and resumed her reading. It was the book of Ruth; and the first name she came to was Elimelech—and Elimelech, she thought, would make a good name for her visitor. All the rest of the day she tended her starling, which had come to her in this strange way just when she needed something better in the house to keep her company than those unfeeling fowls and ducks; and Elimelech, who was stupid from his fall, made no attempt to escape, but took her advances in a grateful spirit.

This was how Selina came by her Starling, and with the natural instinct she possessed of attracting all living creatures to her, she very soon made a friend of it. It was young enough to feel no shyness for the quiet little old woman: it was hardly out of its nursery, and had only just begun to learn to scramble up to the top of the chimney from the ledge on which the nest was placed, when it took a sudden panic, failed to reach the top, and came scrambling down into a new world.