Читать книгу Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and School - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 5

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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.