“A spade or a pickaxe is rather too much for you to handle, my laddie,” he answered, “but you shall have a hoe, which will be big enough to dig a little birdie’s grave.”
Norman having obtained the tool hurried back with it to the yard, where he found Fanny, who had got the cart ready. The gardener understanding what they wanted cut a number of boughs, which placed across the cart formed in their opinion a very appropriate hearse.
Fanny then went back and brought out poor little Pecksy, followed by Norman, who acted as chief mourner. The bird being placed in due form on its bier, they set forth, Fanny drawing the hearse, and Norman carrying the hoe over his shoulder. He looked and indeed felt very sad, while the tears dropped from Fanny’s eyes. Still, perhaps, she was not very unhappy, she could scarcely have been so, with the consciousness that she had acted in a forgiving loving spirit, sorry as she was, however, to have lost her little bird.
They soon reached the spot which Fanny had selected for the grave. It was by her granny’s advice somewhat out of the way.
“See, Norman,” she observed, “it is better here than in a part of the garden we have often to pass, because we need not come here except perhaps by-and-by when we shall have ceased to think so much about poor little Pecksy.”
The trees grew thickly around the spot, but there was an open space of two or three feet. Here the ground being soft, Norman soon dug a grave. It was not very deep, nor long, nor wide, but quite large enough for the purpose.
Having deposited the little bird in it, after Fanny had given one last glance at her pet, Norman covered it up. They then surrounded the grave with the boughs which had served for a bier, and having finished all they could then think of doing, they returned to the house.
On their way they met the gardener, who had, at the request of their granny, prepared a smooth piece of hard wood. Fanny, thanking him, took it into the house, and as she was very neat-handed with her pen, she soon managed to write out the epitaph she proposed.
With this they returned to the tiny grave, and set it up at one end.