_Emily._--“Now, mama, pray keep your promise; the fire is burning
brightly, and here are our little stools, and a chair for you, and we
are quite in the humour for being reminded of the golden-crested wrens;
besides, I want something to make me forget poor Clara--her story has
made me quite sad.”
“Well then, one day soon after your squirrel had escaped from his cage,
we were standing under a fir-tree, watching the little fellow as he
was scraping the fir-apples with his teeth, and sending down showers
of the outside shell upon our heads. All at once we heard the quick
soft chirp, scarcely louder than a grasshopper’s, which you had learned
to know so well, and looking up, we saw a pair of golden-crested wrens
pop into a snug little nest, which hung from the twig of a cedar
close by. O how you and Edwin jumped about for joy at the discovery,
while you cried out, ‘Do, mama, let us bring the pruning steps--see,
they are close by; do let us get up them, and have one peep at the
eggs, not bigger than peas, or the little tiny birds, if they are
hatched.’ The steps were soon placed at the foot of the cedar; but O!
what happened;--they slipped, and a branch which they had kept back,
escaped and flew against the nest. The little birds were startled, and
one after the other came half tumbling, half fluttering down to the
ground. Out sprung naughty pussy from the shrubbery where she had been
watching, and we could scarcely pick them up quick enough to save them
from her claws. Poor little things! we did not mean to hurry you out
of your nice soft nest; we only wished to have one peep at your pretty
bead-like eyes, your funny chuffy faces, and your little green bodies,
not an inch long.”
“But now, mama,” said Edwin, “we were obliged to save them from that
savage pussy,”--“we were; so we took them into the house and put them
in the canary’s cage--but ah! they flew through the wires as easily as
if they had been tiny bees instead of birds; so we contrived a wire
front to a box till we could have a cage made on purpose for them. Then
we got their own soft nest and put it in the box, and set them on the
porch beneath my window. And do you remember what pleasure it was to
see the old birds come, and cling to the wires with the food sticking
to their little sharp black bills, which the young ones so cleverly
picked off.”
_Emily._--“Yes, mama; and when we got their pretty new cage with its
swinging perches, how nice it was to see the little funny things
sitting all in a row with their soft sides pressed so close to each
other, and all their little cunning faces turned the same way, watching
for the food we gave them. Sometimes we used to treat them by sticking
a branch of honeysuckle in the cage, and then they would run up and
turn the flowers inside out, hanging by their tiny claws, and helping
themselves to the blight. O how tame and pretty they grew, and their
little crests came peeping on their heads and looked like crocus-buds.
But now, mama, are we not coming to the melancholy part?”
“Yes, indeed we are; so we will not spoil this evening’s pleasure, but
leave the recollection of what happened to your pretty pets at last,
till another evening.”