_Emily._--“Now the fire burns dimly, mama, and so it ought for such a
melancholy story; and I feel quite sad enough to listen to the rest of
what happened to our pretty little wrens; so pray, mama, begin.”
“One day we were sitting at the window sorting seeds to sow in your
little gardens, when we heard a scrambling noise in the jessamine which
runs up from the porch to my window, where we had just before left
the pretty wrens, chirping and stretching their tiny wings to catch
the warm sun-beams. The next moment a strange half-starved cat sprung
from the jessamine, and crept along the turf till she reached the
shrubbery, and then forcing herself through the bushes, hid herself
from our sight.
“There was a cry of distress from all the little birds which had before
been singing so merrily among the branches, and we saw the poor parent
golden-crested wrens wheeling round and round in the air, and following
the direction which the strange cat had taken. We remembered the poor
goldfinches, so we guessed but too well what had happened. We ran up
stairs, and there we heard a fluttering, and we dared scarcely look
into the cage; but when we did look, there lay one poor pretty thing
quite dead, with its breast all bleeding from a stab by the strange
cat’s cruel claw, and the others were all beating the wires with their
little gasping bills: in a few minutes two of them dropped down dead by
the side of their little brother, and before night the last had pined
itself to death.”