I
GRAY LADY APPEARS
Sarah Barnes hurried up the hill road so fast that by the time she
reached the short bit of lane that turned in at her own gate she was
quite out of breath, and oh, so warm! Fanning vigorously with her
sun-hat did not help her much, for its wide rim had a rent in it, made
by Jack, the family puppy, so that when she reached the steps of the
porch, she sank down in a heap, only having breath enough to exclaim,
“Oh, grandma, what _do_ you think?”
Old lady Barnes with a sigh dropped the checked shirt that she was
patching into the big work-basket that rested on the bench beside her.
This basket was already overflowing with other garments for both boys
and girls, that needed everything in the way of repair from a button to
a knee patch, or even to a whole sleeve, for with a slim purse and six
children to keep covered neither Grandma Barnes’ work-basket nor her
fingers knew many empty moments.
Taking off her spectacles and rubbing her eyes, as if to see the news as
well as to hear it, she said: “Don’t tell me Tommy has got hurt in that
reaping-machine, down at Weatherby’s. I told your pa he was too young to
handle such a job!”
“No, Tommy’s all right—they were gathering in the last stack as I came
by.”
“Lammy _hasn’t_ gone in swimming again down to the crick with the Connor
boys?”
“Nope, he’s stopped behind at the Centre to tend store for Mr. Sims,
’cause his horse got loose in Deacon Mason’s orchard and ate himself
into the colic!”
“Billy hasn’t fell off the fish-market roof, has he? Your pa took him
there this mornin’ to help hand up shingles, though ’twas against my
wishes.”
“No, grandma, Billy’s all right, too,” said Sarah, who had recovered her
breath by this time and was beginning to laugh. “What makes you always
think worry? Pa is all right, and Mary and Ruth are helping the
minister’s wife get the hall ready for the cake sale, and I’m here, so
you see there’s nothing the matter with _us_.”
“Think worry!” exclaimed grandma, now settling her glasses again and
preparing to hear the news comfortably so long as neither her son nor
his children, to whom she was both grandmother and mother, were in
danger, “wait until your only son’s wife dies and leaves you to keep
track of six children, with as mixed tempers and complexions as ducks,
chickens, and turkeys all in one brood, and I guess you’ll think worry
too. But why don’t you fetch out your news?—Not but what you are all
good and promising enough in your way,” she added hastily, lest she
should be found belittling her own flesh and blood, which she considered
next to breaking the whole ten commandments.
“Well, granny,” began Sarah, bringing out her words slowly, and
satisfied that the old lady’s expectations were sufficiently raised and
that she would have an attentive listener, “the General Wentworth place
is open and they’re putting new fences all around the back of it, and a
lovely Gray Lady and a little girl with golden hair have come to live
there. They have been there since spring too, and I didn’t know it. The
girl is as old as me, but she’s smaller, for she isn’t strong and sits
in a wheel-chair, and they’ve asked me to come in again.”
Off came the glasses, and the old hands that folded them away in their
case trembled with excitement. “The General Wentworth place open after
all these years, since his only daughter Elizabeth married her cousin
John, whom we all expected to die a bachelor, and then he fell into poor
health! You don’t remember him, Sarah Barnes, ’cause you wasn’t born,
but he was a mighty strange fellow, handsome and likely; he wouldn’t be
a soldier as his uncle wished, but he was great for readin’ books, and
he used to wander all over the country here watching birds and things
and drawin’ pictures of them. I heard John died a couple of years ago
away in foreign parts,—it can’t be Elizabeth that’s come back,—she
wouldn’t be a gray-haired old woman, as you say. I knew her when she was
a girl. She was full of life and rode a pony everywhere; her father used
to bring her over to our mill, and many a ginger cooky of my baking has
she ate. No, it can’t be little Miss Elizabeth,—it’s more likely some
one that has hired or bought the place and goin’ to upset and change it
all.”
“I didn’t say the lady was old, grandma; she has lots of soft, silvery,
wavy hair with big gray eyes to match, and such a pretty colour in her
cheeks, and her dress was soft and fluffy too and the colour as if
purple and white violets and silver popple leaves were all mixed
together,” said Sarah, moving her hands before her, a little way she had
when talking, as if in describing what she had seen she was touching the
real object, for Sarah, though only a little girl from a bare hillside
farm and taught at the school below at Foxes Corners, had a keen eye for
colour and loved beautiful things, so that ugliness or unkindness of any
sort really hurt her if she could have explained her feelings.
“My Gray Lady’s first name is Elizabeth, though, and she knows you and
your molasses cakes,” continued Sarah, after a moment’s pause, “for she
said, ‘When you go home say to your grandmother that Elizabeth who rode
the black pony sends her love, and that she will go to see her soon, and
that she hopes that she will give the little Elizabeth some of the
cookies of which she has often heard.’ Elizabeth is the little girl, but
I’m going to call her Goldilocks, because the name matches her hair and
she looks as if she was meant to—
“‘Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam
And feast upon strawberries, sugar, and cream.’”
“Elizabeth Wentworth and her daughter back here and I never knew it!”
cried Grandma Barnes, rising as if to take immediate action. “Your Aunt
Jane might well say, as she did on her last visit, that this hill farm
is as far out o’ the world as livin’ in a lighthouse that had no stairs
or boat to it, and the only way to get anywhere was to take a dive and
swim. But see here, Sarah Barnes, how did you come to meet the General’s
folks? It’s near a mile from the road up from the Centre to their front
gate; mebbe you ran across them in the village, and if so, how came you
to speak?”
Sarah opened her lips to answer and then stammered and grew red under
her grandmother’s keen gaze. “I didn’t pass their gate and I didn’t meet
them in the village. I was—I was just taking a bunch of field flowers,
that I got along the road, up to the cemetery to mother, and then when I
go there, I usually take some to the General’s mound too, ’cause nobody
took anything, except a little flag Memorial Day, and it’s usually all
faded by now. This year, though, the lot was planted with flowers, and I
was wondering why. I was sittin’ there watching a gray squirrel that
lives in one of the old cannons that stand at the plot corners. You see
the squirrel knows me because I’ve taken him nuts two winters whenever
we’ve gone to Pine Hill coasting, and he comes up real close. To-day
when he came up, I only had some cracker crumbs in my pocket, but he
acted real pleased to see me, and I was so busy talking to him that I
didn’t hear anybody coming up until somebody said, ‘Who is this little
girl that brings flowers to an old soldier’s grave, and has a squirrel
for a friend?’”
“A nice way of wasting your time, I must say, of a week-day afternoon,
and so much to be done at home,” broke in Mrs. Barnes, rather crossly.
But Sarah, not minding the interruption, continued: “Then I jumped up,
and there was Gray Lady and Goldilocks sitting in a nice big straw
chair, like those on Judge Jones’ porch, only it had wheels and a handle
behind like a baby wagon, and a fattish woman with a pleasant face was
pushing it.”
“Well, what happened next?” asked grandma. “I wonder she didn’t tell you
not to trespass and feed animals in a cemetery!”
“Oh, no, she liked it, and we got acquainted right away. She asked me
what put it in my head to bring the flowers, and told her that it was
because nobody else did and that I loved the General because my mother
told me that though he lived through a lot of battles, he got the wound
that made him die long after, in trying to get back a little black child
that had been sold away from its mother, for it’s an awful thing to take
children away from their mothers, and only God should do it, and I know
He must be always sorry when He has to. And I said I knew how it hurt
because He took my mother away from me.
“Goldilocks said she wished that she had a tame squirrel down in her
garden, and I said there were plenty of squirrels there, and she could
begin to tame ’em as soon as food gets scarce. Then she asked how I
knew, and then it all came out that Dave and Tommy Todd, Mary, and I
often take a cross-cut through the General’s orchard, when we go over to
Aunt Jane’s. Then they asked me to walk down home with them.
“There was a new high fence all round the orchard, with a gate by the
old house in the corner that has the big stone chimney, where the
Swallows live, so we can’t cut across any more, and before I thought, I
said so; but Gray Lady said, ‘I think, Sarah, it will be quite as
pleasant for you to come in at the front gate, and go out at the back,
as to crawl through a hole in the brush like a fox or a woodchuck,’ and
I guess it will, for she doesn’t want us to stop coming.
“Then I asked her if the house had lovely pictures in it and birds with
real eyes sitting on perches, and more books than the Sunday-school
library, and she laughed and asked who told me that, and I said it was
Jake Gorham that went up there to set new glass in the roof light after
the hail-storm last summer.”
“Sarah Barnes! such gall as to make free and talk to General Wentworth’s
daughter like that! I just wonder what she thinks of you!”
“She didn’t tell me, grandma; but, oh, what do you suppose, she said
that if I came down some afternoon, she’d show me all the pictures and
then I could tell Goldilocks how to begin to make friends with the
squirrels, and that she would show me their tree with a lunch-counter on
it for birds, where there is something for every kind to eat. Do you
suppose she will ask me for this Saturday, grandma, and may I wear my
pink lawn, if it stays warm? My Sunday dress for fall shows where the
hem was let down.”
“She may and then again mayhap ’twill be the last you’ll ever hear of
it. Come to think of it, in those days my ginger cookies were mixed with
butter instead of lard, and they had currants in them. I guess I’ll risk
it to make a batch to-morrow, lest Mrs. John should come up—that is if
I finish all this mending, for there is only one more Saturday and Labor
Day, and then school opens, and all you girls and boys will be making
excuses for shirking your chores. Five o’clock already! Sarah Barnes, do
you go straight out and feed the chickens and then rinse those
milk-pans,—that comes first before all the fine talk of seein’ pictures
and making pies and cakes for birds.”
Sarah went slowly toward the barnyard and fed the greedy fowls in an
absent-minded sort of way, all the while looking across the field where
the birds were beginning to gather in flocks, wishing she knew them all
by name and thinking of Gray Lady and Goldilocks. Would they remember
the invitation or would she never perhaps see them again? School would
soon begin, and that meant no spare time until after four, and it is so
often rainy on Saturday.
Rain did not wait for Saturday this time, for a heavy drizzle set in
that night, and Sarah went to sleep wondering exactly what a bird
lunch-counter was and what became of it when it rained.
Then school began, and her new friend made no sign, and Sarah began to
wonder if her meeting with Gray Lady had been one of the dreams she so
often had when she sat on the orchard fence in June watching the
bobolinks fly over the clover and waiting for things to happen.
II
A RAINY DAY
It was the first Friday of the fall term and there were only fifteen
scholars at the weather-beaten shingled schoolhouse at Foxes Corners.
The usual number in winter was twenty-five, but some of the older pupils
did not return until late in October, for these boys and girls helped
their fathers and mothers either about the farm work or in the house,
and as this school district was located in pretty rolling hill country,
with woods and a river close by, city people came to board at the
farm-houses and often did not go away until they had seen the leaves
redden and fall.
Miss Wilde, the teacher, was very glad to begin with only fifteen
scholars. She was not very strong; the children were always restless
during the first month after their vacation. Then, too, it is more
difficult for a teacher to interest scholars that range from five to
fifteen than where she has children all of an age.
Miss Wilde was very patient, for she loved outdoors and liberty herself,
and she knew just how hard it was in these first shut-in days for the
children to look out the open windows and see the broad fields
stretching out to the woods, and hear the water rushing over the dam at
Hull’s Mill, and then take any interest in bounding the Philippine
Islands and remembering why they are of special value to the United
States.
Tommy Todd was what is usually called the “bad boy” of the school. He
was thirteen, keen-witted and restless. He learned his lessons quickly,
and then when Miss Wilde was hearing the little ones drone out their
“twice one is two,” “twice two is four,” he often sat idle in his seat
devising mischief that he sometimes put in motion before school was
over.
Then there were some days when it seemed as if Tommy would leave his
desk and fly out of the window in spite of himself. Poor Miss Wilde had
been obliged to make him change desks twice already. From his first
place he could look at a pasture, where a family of woodchucks had their
burrows, and he had caused several stampedes, not only among the boys,
but girls also, by calling out: “Hi! there goes a buster! I bet its
hide’s worth more’n a quarter! Now Jones’ yaller dog is after him! Hi!
there! good work! he’s headin’ of it off! Gee, Hog’s reared and give him
a bite! There they go round the hill! If the hole back t’other side I
stuffed Saturday’s got loosed out, I bet on the hog!” (Ground-hog being
the familiar name for the woodchuck in this region.)
Order being restored, Tommy was moved to the east side of the room. Here
the view was downhill over the lowlands, ending at a great corn-field
that belonged to Tommy’s grandfather. The corn was yellow in the ear,
but still standing. A flock of crows that had a roost in the swampy
millwoods knew all about this corn-field and considered it as their own
property, for had they not superintended its planting, helped thin out
the seed lest it should grow too thick, and croaked and quavered
directions to old man Todd and his horses every time they ploughed and
hoed? Now, guided by a careful old leader who sat on a dead sycamore top
and gave warning (for all crow flocks have such a chief), they were
beginning to attack the ripened ears, the scarecrows placed at intervals
that had been of some use in the early season having now lost the little
influence they possessed and fallen into limp heaps, like unfortunate
tramps asleep by the wayside.
So every time the crows came over, Tommy would stretch up in his seat
and finally slip out of it entirely and, hanging half out of the window,
shake his fist at them, all the time uttering dire threats of what he
would do if he only had his father’s shot-gun.
For these reasons, Friday morning saw him seated in the middle of the
room with the older girls and sharing the double desk with Sarah Barnes.
Now Sarah thought that Tommy was the cleverest boy she had ever seen,
and Sarah had visited in Centre Village in Hattertown, and Bridgeton,
been twice to the Oldtown County Fair, and would have gone to New York
once with her Aunt Jane if measles had not prevented; so that her
friends thought, for thirteen, she was quite a travelled lady.
Tommy also considered her favourably and had been heard to say that she
was not bad for a girl; yet, to be put in the middle seats with the
girls he considered an insult to his years, and he was sulky and brooded
mischief all the morning.
In reality Tommy was not a bad boy in any way. What he wanted was plenty
of occupation for his mind and body to work at. Miss Wilde knew this and
tried to give him as many little things to do as possible. It was Tommy
who had charge of the new cage rat-trap of shiny copper wire, in which
it was hoped the field rats might be caught, that, as soon as cool
weather came, gnawed their way in through the loose floor boards and
sometimes destroyed the books, and, as Sarah Barnes declared (whose duty
it was to keep the wells filled), drank the ink. Tommy also kept the
water-pail full and tended the big wood-stove in winter; but none of
these tasks seemed to touch the restless spot and he could think out
more puzzling questions in a day than the whole school board could have
answered in a week, and then, as Sarah Barnes once said, “Tommy Todd’s
questions never seem to stay answered.”
Miss Wilde had taught, at first, in the school of a large town where
there were plenty of pictures and maps on the walls, and charts of
different kinds and reference books for the children to use, and where
people who loved children would often drop in and tell them about birds
and flowers or their journeys to interesting places. She had taken the
country school because the doctor thought it would be better for her
health, and oh, how she wished that she could have brought some of the
pictures and books with her, or that some of the summer boarders who
stayed until almost winter would come in and talk to her pupils. She
told the children stories or read to them on Friday afternoons. She also
knew that there were some travelling libraries of books that she might
borrow that the children could have themselves, but reading is a habit;
the children needed to be interested first. So it came about that, when
the second year of her school life on the hillside began, Miss Wilde
felt rather discouraged.
On this particular rainy Friday she was feeling worried about her
mother, who boarded at the Centre Village and with whom she spent every
week-end, going down with the mail-carrier on his return trip Friday
evening and usually walking back on Sunday afternoon if no one chanced
to be driving that way. Mrs. Wilde had been ill the Sunday before and
Miss Wilde had not heard a word all the week. Everything had gone awry
that morning, and when the last child had filed out for the dinner-hour
and gone splish-splashing up the muddy road, before straightening out
the room as usual, Miss Wilde sat down at the desk, her head in her
hands, and two big tears splashed down on the inky blotting-paper before
her. Presently she wiped her eyes, opened all the windows that the rain
did not enter, took her box of luncheon from her desk, and walked slowly
down the side aisle to the little porch, which also acted as the
cloak-room, the place where she usually ate her luncheon when it was too
cool or wet to go outdoors.
As she passed Tommy Todd’s desk she thought she heard a noise, and
glanced sideways, half expecting to see him crouching under it, bent
upon some prank. No one was there, and still there was a scratching
sound in that vicinity. Opening the desk lid, Miss Wilde gave a scream,
for inside was the new trap and inside the trap two wicked-looking old
rats whose whiskers had evidently grown gray with experience.
“I wonder what he would have done with them if I had not found him out?”
she said to herself, as she lifted the cage, by hooking the crook of her
umbrella into the handle on the top, and carrying it with the greatest
care, put it into the empty wood-box in the porch. Then she seated
herself on the bench by the outer door and unstrapped her box. But it
evidently was not intended that the poor teacher should lunch that day,
for suddenly the door flew open and the weather-beaten face of Joel
Hanks, the carrier who had the forenoon mail-route, peered anxiously in.
“You here, Miss Wilde?” he called anxiously. “I’m glad yer hain’t gone
up to the house for your nooning, cause I clean fergot when I come by
up, but yer Ma’s feelin’ extra poorly and uneasy, and she thought mebbe
you could come back along with me instead of waiting till night. I’m
goin’ to eat over to Todd’s and I can stop back for you close to one if
you can arrange to go.”
“Oh, I wish I had known it before the children went to dinner,” she
cried, clasping her hands together nervously and dropping the box, out
of which her lunch rolled to the floor, amid the damp that had been made
by wet coats, overshoes, and dripping umbrellas. “As it is, when the
children come back, I cannot send them right home again, for some have a
long walk. If it wasn’t for Tommy Todd, I could leave Sarah Barnes for
monitor; but there are those rats, and the school board does not like me
to shorten hours so soon after vacation. It’s too late for me to go over
for Mrs. Bradford, or I know that she would help me by coming as she did
several times last spring.”
“Sorry I couldn’t stop this morning, but I come by the lower road. Wall,
mebbe you’ll think out some way and I’ll stop back a bit a’ter one,”
Joel said cheerfully, going back to his covered cart and chirping to his
wise old horse, who, though he was gaunt and had only one good eye, knew
every letter-box on the route and solemnly zig-zagged across the road
from one to the other on his way up to Foxes Corners, but as surely
passed them by without notice on the return trip.
Miss Wilde had barely swept away the scattered lunch through the open
door when again she heard wheels, and looking up saw that which made her
stand stock-still in surprise, broom in hand,—a trim, glass-windowed
depot wagon, such as she had seldom seen out of Bridgeton, drawn by a
handsome pair of gray horses, whose long, flowing tails were neatly
braided and fastened up from the mud with leather bands, instead of
being cruelly docked short as sometimes happens. The driver, a
pleasant-looking, rosy-cheeked man, was well protected by coat and boot
of rubber; but before Miss Wilde could more than glance at the outfit
the door opened and a lady stepped lightly out, reaching the school
porch so quickly that she had no need of an umbrella.
Spying Miss Wilde, she said in a voice clear as a bell, and yet so well
modulated and sweet that no one who heard her speak ever forgot its
sound—“Are you the teacher here?”
“Yes.”
“And your name?”
“Rosamond Wilde,” replied the astonished girl, hastily hanging up the
broom, unconsciously leading the way into the stuffy schoolroom and
placing the best chair by the side of her desk, as she did when the
minister, Dr. Gibbs, from Centre Village, who was president of the
school board, came to hold a spelling-match.
“Thank you,” said the silvery voice, as its owner took the proffered
seat, turning so that she could look out of the window.
“I have heard from Dr. Gibbs that you sometimes use part of Friday
afternoon for telling the children stories, or reading something that
may amuse as well as teach them, and I thought that perhaps, as the
board does not object, you might sometimes be willing to have me come in
and talk to them. I am very fond of children, and have one little girl
of my own, so that I know very well what they enjoy. I’ve travelled for
several years, and I have a great many interesting pictures I could show
them. Then, too, I have always loved birds and flowers, and with my
father I used to tramp about and learned to know all those of this
neighbourhood. I well remember that when I was a child and studied at
home, rainy Friday afternoons were always pleasant, because mother, my
cousins, and I had fancy-work or some other sewing and stories; so I
thought to-day perhaps would be a good time for a beginning.”
If the sky had opened and an angel come directly to her aid, Miss Wilde
could not have been more overcome. She pulled herself together and began
to frame a polite answer, when looking at the guest, who had thrown off
her light raincoat, she caught the sympathetic glance that shot from a
lovely pair of gray eyes with black lashes, and saw that the fluffy gray
hair belonged to a really young woman, but a little older than herself.
Forgetting that a teacher is supposed never to lose control of herself,
before she realized that she had said a word she had told this friend in
need about her school, Tommy Todd, her mother’s sickness, and all.
In less time than it takes to tell of it, the coachman had been told to
go down to the blacksmith’s shop and wait under cover until three
o’clock, and Miss Wilde was helped to make her preparation for leaving.
When the children came trooping back, they found the door between
cloak-room and schoolroom closed, and teacher waiting for them in the
outer room with very rosy cheeks and a happier expression than her face
usually wore.
Tommy Todd looked relieved, for, he reasoned, if teacher knew there were
two rats in his desk, she would not have looked pleased. In a few words
Miss Wilde explained the happenings, cautioned them to be very good, and
saying, “Right, left, right, left,” was about to open the door for the
children to march in, when Sarah Barnes asked, “Teacher, what is her
name, so we can call her by it?” Then teacher realized that she didn’t
know. But as the door opened Sarah said, in a very loud whisper, as
whispers are apt to sound louder than the natural voice, “Why, it’s my
Gray Lady!” and so in truth it was.
Teacher watched them until they took their seats, and then gently closed
the door behind her. For a moment no one spoke. Tommy Todd peeped
cautiously into his desk to be sure the rats were safe, and found to his
dismay that they were gone. Inwardly he hoped they wouldn’t get loose,
for Gray Lady didn’t look as if she would like rats, which showed that
after only one glance he wished to please her, while at the same time
the name by which they first knew her became fixed in the mind of every
child.
III
GRAY LADY AT SCHOOL
The silence inside the school continued a full minute, that seemed like
an hour, and the dripping of the rain from the gutter was so plain that
Sarah found herself counting the drops—“One—two—three—four—splash!”
Fifteen pairs of eyes were fastened upon the newcomer, and, as she
caught the various questions in them, the colour in her cheeks deepened.
Suddenly she recognized her little friend whom she had met on the
hillside the week before. “Sarah Barnes,” said Gray Lady, “will you not
tell me the names of your schoolmates and introduce me to them? It is
always so much more pleasant when we are looking at people, places, or
things to know what they are called.”
Then Sarah, delighted at being remembered when she had begun to be quite
sure that all her hopes were in vain, guided by an inborn instinct of
politeness that told her it would not be civil to stand at her desk and
call out the various names, marched solemnly up to the teacher’s desk
and, beginning in the front row with her own little sister Mary,
repeated the fifteen names in full, with the greatest care and
distinctness, and each child, not knowing what else to do, bobbed up and
answered, “Present,” the same as if teacher had been calling the roll.
When Sarah had finished, she was quite out of breath, for some of the
names were very long; the last, that of the one little Slav in the
school, Zella Francesca Mowralski, being also hard to pronounce.
“Thank you,” said Gray Lady; “I think that I can remember the first
names at least. But now that you have presented your friends to me,
won’t you kindly present me to them? You know who I am and where I live,
do you not?”
“Of course I do!” cried Sarah, glad to be in smooth water again. “You
are Goldilocks’ mother, Gray Lady, and you are our General’s daughter
and you live in his house!” Then, realizing that she had given play to
her own fancy rather than stated the facts expected, she fled to her
desk and hid her face behind its lid.
No reproof followed her as she expected, but instead the pleasant voice
again said: “Thank you, Sarah; I like the name you have given me better
than my very own, and if you all know where to find the General’s house,
you know where to find me,” and when Sarah, gaining courage, looked up
again, she saw, what the others did not notice, that the gray eyes were
brimming, though there was a smile on her lips.
“Now, children, what would you like to hear about this afternoon? Miss
Wilde told me that she had intended giving you a spelling review and
writing exercise of some kind, but that we might finish the day as we
choose. Shall I read you a story, or would you like to ask questions and
talk best?—one at a time, of course!”
“Talk—you talk,” shouted a vigorous chorus.
“By the way, Tommy Todd,” said Gray Lady, “why do you sit in the middle
with the girls instead of on the outer row with the boys, where there is
more room?”
Tommy, placed between Sarah Barnes and his own sister, started half up
in his seat and looked all round the room as if seeking a way of escape,
and finding none, dropped his gaze to his desk and sat mute with a very
red face.
The question was repeated—still no answer. A hand flew up. “I know,”
piped the voice of one of the little ones in front; “it’s ’cause Tommy
can’t keep his eyes inside the winder if he’s by it; he’s always spying
out at ground-hogs and crows and askin’ teacher questions about the
birds setting on the wires, so he don’t mind his books and teacher don’t
know the answers to all he asks, an’ it gives her the headache!”
“Well, Tommy,” said Gray Lady, who had learned that at least one of the
children before her cared for out-of-doors, which was precisely what she
wanted to know, “as long as this is a sort of holiday, suppose you take
that empty seat by the east window and tell us what you see. You may
open the window and the others on that side also, for I think the rain
is over; yes, the clouds are breaking away.”
How fresh and sweet the air was that rushed into the close room! Tommy
stuck his head out and took a great breath as he looked down over the
corn-fields,—his enemies the crows were not there.
“There isn’t much to see now, it’s too wet yet,” he said; “but pretty
soon there will be, for most birds and things get hungry right after a
rain!”
“Olit—olit—olit—che-wiss-ch-wiss-war,” sang a little bird in a low
bush by the roadside.
“What bird is that,” asked Gray Lady; “do any of you know?”
“It’s just the usually little brown bird that stays around here most all
the time, but I love the tune it sings,” said Sarah Barnes. “Teacher
says it’s some kind of a sparrow.”
“It is a Song Sparrow,” said Gray Lady, “and you are right in saying it
stays with us almost all the year.”
“Now,” called Tommy, “the birds are beginning to come out; some Barn
Swallows are flying over the low meadow and there’s a lot of ’em, and
another kind strung along the wires on the turnpike. They always sit
close and act that way all this month and some fly away, and ’long the
first part of next month, when the corn’s all husked, they’ll be gone!
Please, ma’am, why do some birds never go away, and some do, and what
makes ’em come back?” Then Tommy began one of the volley of questions
that Miss Wilde so dreaded.
“Yes, an’ please, ma’am,” asked Dave, “why are some birds that mate
together such different colours?” “An’ what becomes of Bobolinks after
Fourth of July?” asked another. “An’ what makes birds have so many kind
of feet?” queried a third.
Then questions flew so thick and fast that Gray Lady could not even hear
herself think, and presently, when every one had laughed at the
confusion, order was restored.
“I asked you a moment ago what you would like to hear about. I think I
know. You would like to hear about birds! Are there any other boys here
besides Tommy and Dave who care about birds?” asked Gray Lady, who
wished to have each child feel that he or she had a part in what was
going on.
“I know about birds’ eggs!” cried Bobby Bates, a boy who, from being
undersized, looked much younger than he really was; “I’ve got a pint
fruit-jar of robins’ eggs.”
“But I’ve got a quart jar of mixed eggs,” said Dave, “and they’re mostly
little ones, Wrens and Chippy birds and such like, so’s I’ve really got
more’n Bobby!” he added boastfully.
Gray Lady opened her lips to speak sharply and her eyes flashed, for
nest-robbing was one of the things she most detested. Then she
remembered that perhaps these children had not only never even dreamed
that there was any harm in it, but had never heard of the laws that wise
people had made to protect the eggs of wild birds, as well as the birds
themselves, from harm. So she hesitated a moment while she thought how
she might best make the matter understood.
“Why do you like to collect eggs?” she asked. “Because they are pretty?”
“Yes’m, partly,” drawled Dave, “and then to see how many I can get in a
spring.”
“But do you never think how you worry the mother birds by stealing their
eggs, and how many more birds there would be if you let the eggs hatch
out? What the rhyme says is true,—
“‘The blue eggs in the Robin’s nest
Will soon have beak and wings and breast,
And flutter and fly away!’
Only think, if all those robins’ eggs of yours, Bobby, and all your
little eggs, Dave, should suddenly turn into birds and fly about the
room, how many there would be! But now they will never have wings and
swell their throats to sing to us and use their beaks to eat up insects
that make the apples wormy and curl up the leaves of the great shade
trees.”
“Robins don’t do any good; they just spoil our berries and grapes; dad
says so, and he shoots ’em whenever he can, and he likes me to take the
eggs,” said Dave, stubbornly, while Sarah Barnes exclaimed, “Yes, an’
_my_ father says he ought to be ashamed of himself!” almost out loud.
“I know that Robins sometimes eat fruit,” said Gray Lady, firmly, “but
they do so much more good by destroying bugs that the Wise Men say that
neither they nor their eggs shall be taken or destroyed, and what they
say is now a law. So that it is not for any one to do as he pleases in
the matter. To kill song-birds or destroy their eggs is as much breaking
the law as if you stole a man’s horse or cow, for these birds are not
yours; they belong to the state in which you live.”
Bobby and Dave looked surprised, but Tommy and Sarah nodded to one
another, as much as to say, “We knew that, didn’t we?”
“Some day, if you are clever with your lessons so that Miss Wilde can
spare the time for it, I will tell you all about the reasons for these
laws, and what the wild birds do for us, and what we should do for them.
But first you must learn to know the names of some of the birds that
live and visit hereabout, as I am now learning yours, and make friends
of some of them as I hope to make friends of you.”
“Yes, yes, oh, yes!”
“You can’t make friends of birds; they won’t let you,” said Dave Drake,
who was a sickly, lanky boy of fourteen with a whining voice; “they
always fly away. That is, I mean tree birds, not chickens nor pigeons.”
“Chickens aren’t birds, they’re only young hens,” put in Eliza Clausen,
with an expression of withering contempt. She was one of the big
fourteen-year-old girls, and not being a good scholar was apt to use
opposition in the place of information.
“We can make friends of at least some birds,” said Gray Lady, “if we are
kind to them. When we have human visitors come to stay with us, what do
we do for them?”
“We let them sleep in the best bedroom, and we get out the best china
and have awful good things to eat, and give ’em a good time,” said Ruth
Barnes, all in one breath.
“Yes, and we should do much the same with our bird friends. They do not
need to have a bedroom prepared; they can generally find that for
themselves, though even this is sometimes necessary in bad weather; but
they often need food, and in order that they should have what Ruth calls
‘a good time,’ we must let them alone and not interfere with their
comings and goings.
“Go softly to the west window and look out,” continued Gray Lady,
raising a finger to caution silence, for from her seat on the little
platform she could see over the children’s heads and out both door and
windows, “and see the hungry visitors that a little food has brought to
the very door.”
The children tiptoed to one side of the room, and there, lo and behold,
was a great Blue Jay, a Robin, a Downy Woodpecker with his clean
black-and-white-striped coat and red neck bow, and a saucy Chickadee,
with his jaunty black cap and white tie, all feasting on the broken bits
of Miss Wilde’s ham sandwich, while a pair of Robins were industriously
picking the fruit from a remnant of huckleberry pie. Unfortunately,
before the children had taken more than a good look, the door banged to
and the birds flew away, the Woodpecker giving his wild sort of laugh,
the Robins crying, “Quick! quick!” in great alarm, while the Jay and
Chickadee told their own names plainly as they flew.
“As we have agreed to talk and ask questions, I will ask the first one,”
said Gray Lady, as they all settled down, feeling very good-natured and
eager to listen.
“Eliza said a few minutes ago that a chicken isn’t a bird. Now a chicken
is a bird, though of course all birds are not chickens.
_The Bird_
“Who can tell me exactly what a bird is? You all may think you know, but
can you put it in words?”
“A bird isn’t a plant; it is an animal,” said Tommy Todd.
“Yes, but a cat is an animal, and a snake, and a horse; and we are
animals ourselves.”
“A bird is a flying animal,” returned Sarah.
“Very true, but so is a bat, and, as you know, a bat has fur and looks
very like a mouse, and a bird does not.
“Ah, you give it up. Very well, listen and remember. _A bird is the only
animal which has feathers!_ With his hollow bones filled with buoyant,
warm air, and covered with these strong pinions, he rows through the
air, as we row a boat through the water with the oars, balancing himself
with these wings, also steering himself with them and with his tail made
of stiff feathers and shaped to his particular need, while with small
feathers laid close, overlapping each other like shingles, and bedded on
an under-coat of down, he is clothed and protected from heat, cold, and
wet.
“The eye of the bird is different from ours, for it magnifies and makes
objects appear much larger to it than they do to us. Also, while with
other animals each group has practically the same kind of feet or beaks,
birds have these two features built on widely different plans, so that
when you have learned to know the common birds by name and are really
studying bird-life, you will find that you must be guided to the orders
in which they belong often by their beaks and feet.
“Barnyard Ducks, as you know, have webbed toes for swimming, and flat
bills to aid them in shovelling their natural food from the mud.
“Birds of prey, like the Hawks and Owls, have strong hooked beaks and
powerful talons or claws, for seizing and tearing the small animals upon
which they feed.
“The Woodpeckers (all but one) have two front and two hind toes; these
help them grasp the tree bark firmly as they rest, while they have
strong-cutting, chisel-like beaks, which they also use for tapping or
drumming their rolling love-songs.
[Illustration: CHICKADEE]
“While the insect-eating song-birds have more or less slender bills and
four toes, three in front and one behind, for perching crosswise on
small branches, the seed-eating songsters, such as Sparrows, have
similar feet, but short, stout, cone-shaped bills for cracking seeds and
small nuts.
“By this you can see that in spite of the fact that all birds wear
feathers, and have wings, a tail, beak, and a pair of legs, they may
still be very different from each other.
“A Turkey Gobbler doesn’t look much like a Robin, nor a Goose like a
Swallow, yet they are all four birds! They all four bring forth their
young from eggs; but the little Turkeys and Goslings are covered with
feathers when they peep out of the shell and are able to walk, while the
young Robins and Swallows are at first blind, naked, and helpless; so
here again you can see that there is something special to be learned
about every bird that flies or swims.”
“Chickadee-dee-dee! Can’t you tell them something about me?” said this
dear little bird, flitting about one of the open windows and clinging
upside down to the blind slats that were bare of paint, like either a
Woodpecker, or, as Tommy Todd remarked, “the man in the circus.”
“The little bird peeping in the window and calling his name reminds me
of a pretty poem about him,” said Gray Lady. “I will repeat it to you
and write it on the board so that you can copy it in your books, and
then some of you may like to learn it to surprise Miss Wilde on another
rainy Friday.”