THE CHILDREN NEXT DOOR
Chummy and I flew up into our favorite elm tree, sat on our feet to
keep them warm, and stared at the boarding house. A taxi was standing
before the front door, and two children were running up and down the
graveled drive, running as if they were glad to be able to stretch
their young legs.
“Their parents went in the house,” said Chummy. “They are choosing
rooms. I can see them going from window to window. I wonder whether
these children will throw me some of the seed cakes they are eating.”
“How little they know that our sharp eyes are on them,” I said.
Chummy clacked his beak together in a bird laugh. “I often think that
as I sit here and listen to what persons say as they go up and down
the street. If I could tell you the secrets I know! I know a very bad
story about that black-haired woman in the red house.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Chummy,” I said. “I dislike gossipy
stories.”
“You’re a funny bird,” he said, with a sidelong glance from his queer,
tired, yet very shiny eyes.
Suddenly I had a mischievous impulse to sing. “Spring is coming,
coming,” I sang, all up and down the scale, then I broke into my
latest song that a very early white-throated sparrow was teaching
me—“I—love—dear—Canada—Canada—Canada.”
The children were so astonished that they rushed over to the tree and
stared up at me.
“Is it a sparrow?” asked the little boy, who was straight and slim and
handsome.
The girl, who was big and bouncing and had golden hair and blue eyes,
burst into a merry laugh. “Oh, Freddie, whoever heard of a sparrow
singing! It’s a wild canary. How I wish we could catch it! I’m going
to see if there’s a cage anywhere in the boarding house,” and she ran
away.
Her brother came quietly under the tree. “Pretty bird,” he said
quietly, “come down and have some of my cake,” and he threw quite a
large piece on the ground.
“Fly down, Chummy,” I said, “and get it. What a joke that the little
girl thinks I am a wild bird!”
“Lots of grown people make her mistake,” said Chummy. “They speak
about seeing wild canaries, when we haven’t such a thing in Canada.
They mean yellow summer warblers or goldfinches. Well, I’m going down
for the cake.”
The boy stood very still and watched him eat it, so I knew he was a
good child.
Presently his little sister came hurrying out of the house with a
battered old cage in one hand and something clasped tightly in the
other.
“Cook gave me something that she said would be sure to catch the
little fellow,” she called out to her brother, “if I can only get near
enough to put it on his tail.”
“What is it?” asked the little boy.
“Nice fine white salt. She says the least pinch on his tail will make
him as tame as a cat. Stand back, Freddie, till I put the cage on the
low branch of this tree. I have some crumbs in it.”
It was amusing to see the two little creatures stand away back in the
drive waiting for me to go in the cage.
Chummy was nearly killing himself laughing. “Naughty cook to spring
that old joke on these innocents!”
“Would you dare me to go in, and let them put salt on my tail?” I
asked.
Chummy was very much taken aback. “You never would, would you?”
“Why not? I never saw a cage yet that could keep me between its bars.
I am so slim that I can slip between anything, and you know what a
swift flier I am.”
“Go on, then,” said Chummy. “I dare you; but take care you don’t get
trapped.”
I made two or three scalloping flights about the children’s heads, as
they stood open-mouthed staring at me, then I darted in the open door
and pretended to eat the bread crumbs—things I dislike very much.
The little girl screamed with delight and loud enough to frighten the
flock of wild geese we had just seen passing overhead on their way
north. Then she ran to the branch, took the cage off, and sticking her
chubby young hand in the door, eagerly sprinkled a generous handful
of moist salt on my tail.
I kept my head down, so none of it would go in my beak, and cast a
glance up at Chummy, who was sitting on his branch, rocking with
laughter. Some of the neighborhood sparrows were with him now, staring
their eyes out at me, and up on the roof Slow-Boy, the pompous old
pigeon, was bending over the edge to look at me, with the most amusing
expression I had ever seen on the face of a bird.
I felt full of fun, and pretended to be quite happy in my new home.
Hopping up on the perch, I gazed at the little girl with twinkling
eyes.
Children are very sharp little creatures. She plunged her own blue
eyes deep into mine and said what an older person would never have
thought of saying, “Freddie, this bird looks as if he were laughing at
me.”
Her brother gave me a long stare; then he said, with a puzzled face,
“Sure—he’s laughing. What makes him laugh?”
“He’s planning to fly away,” she said, with amazing promptness. “Let’s
take him in the house.”
This did not suit my plans at all. I had no desire for a further
acquaintance with Black Thomas, so I promptly flew between the bars of
the cage, and, lighting on a near-by shrub, favored the children with
one of my best songs.
They were delighted, and old Thomas, who had been watching the whole
performance from some hole or corner, came out on the front doorstep,
and said, “Meow! Meow!” a great many times.
Of course the children did not understand him, but I did. He was
saying to me, “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, to fool the
children in my house? Hold on, I’ll get you some day.”
At this, Billie who had been fussing about on her snowbank in great
anxiety, came forward. “If you ever touch that little bird, or even
frighten him, Black Thomas, I’ll choke you to death.”
Thomas made a terrible face and began to spit at her, and I called
out, “Serves you right, you old murderer! We’ll both attend your
funeral. What is that behind you?”
He looked over his shoulder, then he ran away. It was the dead body of
Johnny White-Tail, one of Chummy’s sparrow friends. He had been
ailing for some time, and probably Thomas had sprung on him while he
sat moping and killed him.
Chummy gave a cry of dismay and flew to the steps. This attracted the
children’s attention and, seeing the dead bird, they exclaimed, “Oh,
poor birdie, poor birdie—let’s bury him!”
“I’ll go in the house and get some grave clothes out of my trunk,”
said the little girl whose name was Beatrice.
“And I’ll be the parson and go borrow a book,” said the boy.
Just at this moment, Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo came down the street with
their school bags in hand.
Their bright eyes soon caught sight of the newcomers, and it was
amusing to see them getting acquainted.
They walked round each other and stared at each other, and finally
spoke and soon the strangers were exhibiting the dead sparrow, and
said they were going to have a funeral.
“Why, that’s Albino,” said Sammy-Sam.
I must explain that the children did not know our names for each other.
We could not tell them that the white-tailed bird was called Johnny by
us.
“And we’ve fed him all winter at the birds’ table in the yard,” said
Lucy-Loo. “Auntie will be sorry that he is dead.”
“You needn’t trouble burying him,” said Sammy-Sam to the strangers.
“He’s our bird. We’ll dig his grave.”
Young Beatrice rudely snatched the sparrow’s dead body from Sammy-Sam.
“He’s ours,” she said; “we found him. I’m going to dress him in some
of my best dolly’s clothes, and bury him with words and music.”
Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo looked pretty cross, but they said nothing.
They had had weeks of training from their good aunt, who had told them
over and over again that children must have good hearts and good
manners, or they will never get on in the world.
While Beatrice ran in the house Freddie pointed up to the elm where I
was now sitting beside Chummy. “We caught that wild canary up in the
tree. We had him in a cage, but he flew away.”
Our own children stared up at us, and exclaimed together in tones of
dismay, “You caught our Dicky-Dick.”
“Yes, in that cage,” and he pointed to the old thing.
Sammy-Sam’s face was furious and, throwing down his bag, he began to
pull at his smart little overcoat. He was a great fighter, and had
whipped all the boys his size in the neighborhood.
Lucy-Loo twitched his sleeve, “He never caught Dicky-Dick. He’s a
liar.”
This soothed Sammy-Sam, and he picked up his bag.
“I think we’ll go home, and not wait for the funeral,” he said, “but I
tell you, you just let our birds alone. If any boy hurts birds on this
street, I’ll fight him. Now there!” and he strutted away, like a
little peacock with Lucy-Loo trotting after him and casting backward
glances over her shoulder.
Freddie looked puzzled. He had been misunderstood. However, his face
brightened when his sister came out with some little lace and muslin
rags in her hand, a small black book and a wreath of artificial
flowers.
She seemed to be the manager, and said to her brother in a masterful
way, “I just thought I’d bring everything. Now help me dress the
bird—no, you go dig the grave—we must hurry, for it’s ’most our tea
time. Go to the back door for a shovel.”
Freddie did as he was bidden and, finding the frozen earth too hard
for his small coal shovel, he dug a good-sized grave in a big snow
bank on the lawn.
“Now take the book,” said his sister, “and read the service. I can’t,
’cause I’m a girl.”
“She’d run the city if she could,” said Chummy in my ear. “She’s a
terror, is that one.”
The boy with many corrections from his sister mumbled something, then
she said, “For hymn we’ll have, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning.’”
Freddie looked shocked. “That’s for soldiers,” he said, “not for
funerals.”
“We’ll have ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’” she repeated.
“We’ll have ‘Down in the Deep Black Ground,’” he insisted.
Suddenly she lost her temper, slapped him in the face, threw the
flowers at him, and ran into the house.
“Good!” said Chummy. “There’s some stuff in the boy, after all.”
He went on with the service all by himself, sang a dreadful little
song, so mournful and horrible that all Johnny’s sparrow relatives who
had by this time assembled just quailed under it, then gently laid
Johnny in the hole in the snow bank, covered him up, put a shingle at
the head of his little grave and the artificial roses on the top, and
went in the house.
“Well,” said Chummy, “she didn’t get her own way that time.”
“Hold on,” I said, “here she comes. I notice that little girls usually
beat the boys in the long run.”
There she was, the little funny creature, sneaking out of the house by
the back door. She crept to the grave, seized the shovel that Freddie
had forgotten to return, dug up poor Johnny, tore her doll clothes off
him, threw his poor little body on the snow, and ran into the house.
“Well, I vow,” said Chummy. “I wish she could be punished.”
“Hold on,” I said, “look at our children coming. They’ve been watching
all the time.”
Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo were galloping out of our yard like two young
ponies. They snatched up Johnny’s body and rushed to their aunt with
it. I hurriedly said good-bye to Chummy, and flew in the window.
Mrs. Martin heard the whole story. It was perfectly sweet to see her
face, as she listened to the children. Then she got a little tin box,
wrapped Johnny in a nice piece of white cloth, and told the children
that the cover would be soldered on and the furnace man would dig a
nice little grave in the corner of the garden which she kept as a
graveyard for her pets.
“You will become friends with the children in the boarding house, my
dear ones,” she said, “and tell them what you know about birds, for
they evidently have not had much to do with them.”