MORE ABOUT SISTER SUSIE
He kissed her and our Mary and hurried away. We turned our attention
to Sister Susie, who, refreshed by her nap, was cooing and bowing very
prettily to Mrs. Martin.
Such tricks as she played later on, on our good Missie! One day, when
Mrs. Martin was presiding at a Red Cross meeting and begging ladies to
give more money for wounded soldiers, she was first amazed, then
overcome with laughter, to hear “Coo, oo-ooo—” coming from the
knitting bag that she had brought in and put on the table before her.
Sister Susie thought all knitting bags were nests, and went into them
and often laid eggs there. Mrs. Martin was trying to get a mate for
her, but had not yet succeeded, so Daisy and I had her eggs boiled,
and found them very good eating.
Sister Susie collected lots of money for the soldiers. When she cooed,
that day at the meeting, Mrs. Martin lifted her out and put her beside
the money box. She bowed and murmured so gently and coaxingly beside
it that she charmed the money right out of the ladies’ pockets. That
gave Missie the idea of taking her to the meetings, and finally she
had a little box made in the shape of a dove, and Susie would stand
beside it, and peck it, and coo, and ladies would fill it with money.
“Does Susie think it is a dove?” Billie asked me one day.
“Oh, no, she knows what it is; but doves like fun, as well as other
birds, and it amuses her to beat it. One day she played a fine trick
on Missie. She stepped in a knitting bag and went to sleep and Missie
put it on her arm and went downtown. She noticed that the girl in a
department store, who waited on her, looked queerly at her bag, and
bye and bye she asked Missie if she was not afraid her pet would fly
away.
“Mrs. Martin looked round, and there was Sister Susie with her head
sticking out of the hole in her Red Cross bag.
“She took her out and set her on the palm of her hand. ‘You won’t
leave me, will you, Susie?’ she said. ‘You want to stay with me, don’t
you?’
“You see, she always had to ask questions that Susie could say ‘Yes’
to, for the bird did not know how to say ‘No.’
“‘Coo-ooo, oo,’ said Susie, a great many times and bowing very low and
very politely.
“The girl was so delighted that she squealed with laughter, and other
girls came to see what was amusing her. Mrs. Martin went on talking
and Susie cooed so sweetly that there was soon a crowd round them.
“Missie asked her if she liked the store, and if she thought the
people who came shopping could not afford to do a little more for Red
Cross work.
“Susie was charmed to receive so much attention and the enthusiasm of
the shoppers was so great that a manager came out of an office to see
what the excitement was about. He asked if Missie would sell her bird
for him to put in a cage to please the shoppers.
“Missie wheeled round to a woman who was carrying a baby and asked
her if she would sell it.
“‘Not for a thousand dollars,’ she said. ‘My baby loves me.’
“‘And my bird loves me,’ said Mrs. Martin, ‘and I would not sell her
for a thousand dollars, though I thank you, Mr. Manager, for your
offer.’
“‘What theater do you exhibit her in?’ asked one of the women.
“That gave Missie a chance to tell them that she was not a
bird-trainer. She was just a friend to birds and allowed them to
develop along their own lines.
“The woman said that her husband had once been in the business and had
exhibited trained dogs and horses, but she had made him give it up,
when she discovered that his animals were all dull and dispirited, and
that he educated them by means of sharp nails between his fingers that
he pressed into them when he was pretending to stroke them.
“‘I caught him one day pulling out the teeth of a pony,’ she said,
‘because the pony bit him, and I tell you I gave him a tongue-lashing—and
I threw out a can of paint that he used to cover the sores on his
animals’ backs. “Let the public see the sores, me man,” I said, “and
it’s good-bye to me if you don’t give up every one of those poor
creatures. If I’d known you were in such a dirty business I’d never
have married you.” So he said he’d keep me, being as I was the
choicest and trickiest animal he had, and the best kicker, and I bet
you I soon sent that lot of animals flying to good homes in the
country, and I got him a position as policeman, going to His Worship
the Mayor me own self an’ tellin’ a straight story to him that I said
is the father of the city.’
“Susie liked this woman and made a great many direct bows to her which
pleased her very much.
“‘God bless the little angel-faced creetur,’ she said. ‘She reminds me
of me own mother in glory—well, good-bye to ye, me lady, an’ good
luck to the bird. I must hurry home an’ make a toothsome dish for me
old man’s dinner, for it’s bound to please him, I am, since he gave up
his beasts to please me.’
“When she left, the floor-walker gently urged the other women to pass
on and let Mrs. Martin finish her shopping, so she put Sister Susie in
the bag she so loved to travel in and went on with her purchases.”
“Some animals have a dreadful time when they travel,” said Billie.
“When Missie brought me from New York I heard some cattle talking on
the train. One handsome black and white mother cow was saying, ‘My
blood runs like poison in my veins, for I have been three days without
food or water. If human beings wanted to kill me, why did they not do
it away back in Chicago, where I was taken from my baby calf? I pity
the human being that eats me! Another bad, black cow said, ‘My tongue
is dry and I have lost so much blood by getting bruised and torn in
this crowded cattle car that I hope the persons who eat me will die.’”
“If human beings could listen to animals talking,” I said, “they would
get some hints.”
“Mrs. Martin understands,” said Billie. “She told me that when our
train was standing in the station in Albany the waiter in the dining
car brought her two mutton chops. Just as she was going to eat them
she looked out the car window, and there out on the platform in a
crate were two sheep. Fancy, Dicky-Dick—two sheep from a western
plain in a case half boarded up in a rushing railway station. Mrs.
Martin says they looked at her with their suffering eyes. They never
stirred—just showed their agony by their glances, and she pushed away
her plate and said to the waiter, ‘Oh, take it away.’”
“Dear Missie,” said Billie affectionately, “she hates to see anything
suffer. She saw a poor old horse fall down here in the street to-day,
and she went out and gave the owner money enough to take him to the
Rest Home for horses.”
“What is that?” I said curiously. “I have not heard about it.”
“I heard the milkman’s horse talking to the grocer’s horse about it
two days ago,” said Billie. “It has just been started, and it is a big
farm outside the city. The milkman’s horse said to the other horse,
‘You ought to go out there, Tom. Your hoofs are in bad shape, and that
moist land down by the creek on the Rest Farm would set you up again
finely. Then you could lie down in the shade of the tall trees, and
if you were not able to go out at all they would put you in one of the
nice clean barns.”
“Will they take tired dogs and birds out there?” I asked.
“They will take anything,” replied Billie. “Back of the brick farm
house is a long, low building which is a dog’s boarding house. Any one
going away in summer can put a pet animal there and know that it will
have a good time roaming over the farm with the men.”
“Cats have a dreadful time,” I said, “when their owners go away and
leave them.”
Billie began to laugh, and I said in surprise, “My friend, have you
turned heartless about cats?”
“No, no,” said Billie, “but just listen to what Sammy-Sam is saying,
as he walks up and down here under the trees.”
I looked at our handsome little lad, as he paced to and fro, a book by
a well-known animal lover in his hand. Missie, before she went out
this afternoon, had promised him a quarter if he would learn a nice
poem for her before she came home, and this is what he chose, and it
fitted in so well with what I had been saying that it had made Billie
laugh:
“THE WAIL OF THE CAT”
“My master’s off to seek the wood,
My lady’s on the ocean,
The cook and butler fled last night,
But where, I’ve not a notion.
The tutor and the boys have skipped,
I don’t know where to find them:
But tell me, do they never think
Of the cat they’ve left behind them?
“I haven’t any place to sleep,
I haven’t any dinner.
The milkman never comes my way;
I’m growing daily thinner.
The butcher and the baker pass,
There’s no one to remind them:
O tell me, do they never think
Of the cat they’ve left behind them?
“The dog next door has hidden bones,
They’re buried in the ‘arey’;
The parrot’s boarding at the zoo,
And so is the canary.
The neighbors scatter, free from care,
There’s nothing here to bind them:
I wonder if they never think
Of the cat they’ve left behind them?”