A TRIP DOWNSTAIRS
Oh, what a different air the hall had—very quiet and peaceful, no
twittering of birds and never-stopping flying and fluttering, and
chattering and singing, and with the murmur of the fountain going on,
even in our sleep! There was no gravel on this floor, just a
soft-looking thing the color of grass, that I found out afterward was
called a carpet.
Our Mary hopped cheerfully down the stairs. She was quite a young
girl, and had had a fall when a baby, that had made her very lame. Her
parents gave her the bird-room to amuse her, so my mother had told me,
for she could not go much on the street.
On the floor below the attic were some wide cheerful rooms with sunny
windows. These were all called bedrooms, and her parents and two
little cousins slept in them. There was nobody in them on this morning
of my first visit to the big world outside the bird-room, and we went
down another long staircase. Here was a wider hall than the others,
and several rooms as large as two or three bird-rooms put together.
Our Mary took me in between long curtains to a very beautiful place,
with many things to sit on and a covering for the floor just as soft
as our grass sods. She was quite out of breath, and dropping down on a
little chair, put up a finger for me to step on it from her shoulder,
and sat smiling at me.
“What big eyes, birdie!” she said. “What are you frightened of?”
“Of everything,” I peeped; “of this big world, and the huge things in
it.”
She laughed heartily. “Oh, Dicky-Dick, our modest house overcomes you.
I wish you could see some of the mansions up the street.”
“Oh, this is large enough for me, large enough, large enough,” I was
just replying, when I got a terrible fright.
A big monster, ever so much higher than our Mary and dressed
differently, was just coming into the room.
I gave a cry of alarm, and mounted, mounted in the air till I reached
something with branching arms that came down from the ceiling. I
found out afterward that light came from this brass thing. I sat on
it, and looking down with my head thrust forward and my frightened
feathers packed closely to my body, I called out, “Mary, Mary, I’m
scary, scary!” which was a call I had learned from the older birds.
Mary was kissing the monster, and then she sat down close beside him
and held on to one of his black arms.
“Dicky, Dicky,” she sang back to me, “this is my daddy, don’t be
scary. Why, I thought he had been in the bird-room since you were
hatched. Come down, honey.”
Of course if he was her father, he would not hurt me, so I flew back
to her shoulder, but what a queer-looking, enormous father! I was glad
my parent did not look like that.
He was very loving with her, though, and, stroking her hair, he said,
“Don’t tire yourself too much with your birds, Mary.”
“They rest me, father,” she said, shaking her brown head at him, “and
this new baby amuses me very much. He is so inquiring and clever and
such a little victim, for his bigger brother beats the life out of
him.”
“The canary world is like the human world,” said Mary’s father,
“sleep, eat, fight, play, over and over again—will your young pet let
me stroke him?”
“I think so,” she said, “now that he knows who you are.”
“Why, certainly, certainly,” I twittered. “Everybody’s kind but
brother.”
The man laid a big finger, that seemed to me as heavy as a banana, on
my golden head, and stroked me till I bent under the caress.
Fortunately some other person came in the room and he turned his head.
This was our Mary’s mother, Mrs. Martin. I knew her well, for she
often came into the bird-room. She was a very large, cheerful lady,
not very handsome, nor remarkable in any way, and yet different from
most women, so the old birds said. I had heard them talking about her,
and they said she is one that understands birds and beasts, and it is
on account of her understanding that our Mary loves us. They said she
is a very wonderful woman, and that there is power in her eye—power
over human beings and animals, and more wisdom even than our Mary has,
for she is old, and her daughter is young.
“The young can not know everything,” the old birds often sang; “let
them listen to the old ones and be guided by them.”
When Mrs. Martin came in, her quick brown eyes swept over the room,
taking in her daughter, her husband, and even little me perched on our
Mary’s finger.
“Thank fortune, I’m not late for lunch,” she said, sinking into a
chair, “and thank fortune, we have a guest. Excuse me for being late,
birdie,” she said in a most natural way, and treating me with as much
courtesy as if I had been as big as the picture of the eagle on our
bird-room wall.
That’s what the birds said about her, that she believes even a canary
has a position in the world, and has rights. She just hates to have
any creature imposed on or ill-used.
“Come here, dearie,” she said, holding out her plump hand toward me,
“and kiss me.”
I flew to her at once, and, putting up my tiny bill, touched her red,
full lips. Such a big lady she was, and yet she reminded me of my
little golden mother.
“Now we will go in to the table,” she said, “and little guest will sit
on my right hand. Anna, bring the fern dish.”
Anna was a fair-haired girl who waited on the Martins and sometimes
helped our Mary in the bird-room, so I knew her quite well. I had
heard of the fern dish from bird guests of the Martins, and I watched
her with great interest as she set it on the huge white table, that
looked so queer to me that first day.
In the middle of the low, round dish of ferns was a little platform
and on the platform was a perch. The bird guest sat on the perch and
ate the food placed before him. He was not expected to run over the
Martins’ table and help himself.
“Dearie, you will not care for soup,” said Mrs. Martin, when Anna
placed a big thing like one of our bathing dishes before her.
I had never seen human beings eating, and as I sat on my perch in the
fern dish I could not help smiling. They did not put their mouths down
to their food, they brought the food up to their mouths by means of
their arms, which are like our wings. Their legs they kept under the
table.
The room in which they had their huge dishes of food and their
enormous table was a wide and pleasant place with a little glass house
off it, in which green and pleasant plants and flowers grew. I loved
the air of this place, so peaceful and quiet, with the nice smell of
food and no bad brother to bother me.
“Feed me, feed me,” I chirped, for I was getting hungry now.
“Wait, my angel pet,” said Mrs. Martin; “wait for the next course.”
Later on I described what came next to my mother, and she said it was
the leg of a soft, woolly young creature that played on the meadows,
and she wondered that good people like the Martins would eat it.
“No meat for birdie,” said Mrs. Martin, “but a scrap of carrot and
lettuce and potato and a bit of that nice graham bread.”
“Thank you, thank you,” I chirped to her, “and now a drink.”
Down among the ferns I had discovered a little egg cup which Mrs.
Martin now filled with water for me. I was excited and thirsty and
drank freely.
When the meat and vegetables were carried out by Anna, fruit and a
pudding came on. I had a little of the pudding which was made of bread
and jam and milk; then Mrs. Martin gave me a grape to peck.
“And now, baby,” she said, “you have had enough. Can’t you warble a
little for us?”
I did my best, but my song did not amount to much. All this time Mr.
Martin and dear Mary had been looking at me very kindly, and when I
finished they both clapped their hands.
At the sound of their applause, there was a great clatter outside in
the hall, and a leaping and bounding and a noise, and a queer animal
not as big as these human beings, but as large as twenty canaries,
came running into the room.
I had never seen anything like this, and giving one shriek of fright,
I sprang from the fern dish and flew high, high up in the air to the
very top of the room. Fluttering wildly round the walls, I found no
support for my claws; then I heard a calm voice saying, “Come down,
come down, dearie, the animal is a dog, a very good dog. She won’t
hurt you.”
Panting violently, I dropped halfway down to a picture hung on the
wall and sat there, staring at the table.
The animal was on Mr. Martin’s knee. He had pushed his chair from the
table, and sat with his arm round it. Such a queer-looking thing, and
yet not vicious. A kind of a wide forehead and staring eyes, and a
good deal of beak, which I found out later was called a muzzle.
I was ashamed of myself, and flew right back to the fern dish. Young
as I was, I knew these kind people would not let anything harm me.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” I gasped. “I was scary, scary again.”
“That is Billie, our dog,” said Mrs. Martin; “she is good to birds.
Mary, have you never had Billie in to see your pets?”
“No,” said her daughter. “You know she has not been here very long.”
“I would like her to be friends with them,” said Mrs. Martin. “Please
take her in soon, but put her out on the front steps now.” Then she
turned to me. “You are going to have another fright, I fear. By
certain signs and tokens, I think my two adopted children are coming
home for lunch.”