Читать книгу Golden Dicky, The Story of a Canary and His Friends - Saunders Marshall - Страница 7

AS I have said before, a strange longing to be out of doors came over me as winter passed away and spring approached. I never wearied of sitting on the window ledges and watching the plucky little English sparrows who sometimes came to the bird-room window and talked over the news of the day with us.

Most of the canaries were very haughty with them, and looked down on them as inferior birds. So the sparrows rarely approached us, unless they had important news to communicate, when eagerness to hear what they had to say made the canaries forget to snub them.

That clever woman, Mrs. Martin, knew that I wished to get out in the street, and one day when there was a sudden thaw after very cold weather, she said to me, as I sat on her bedroom window sill, “I believe my little boy would like a fly out of doors.”

“Dear Missie, Missie, Missie,” I sang, “how sweet you are to me, how sweet!”

“Fly away, then,” she said, throwing up the window. “I don’t think the air is cold enough to hurt you.”

“Thank you, thank you,” I sang, as I flew by her and out into the fresh air.

How can I ever describe my feelings on my first flight into the great big out-of-doors. I had, in my callow innocence, thought the Martin house very large and grand. Why, this big, out-door house had a ceiling so far away that only a very strong bird could ever fly to the top of it.

I felt breathless and confused, and flying straight to a big tree in front of the window, flattened myself against a dark limb, and crouched there half frightened, half enchanted with myself.

Suddenly a sharp little voice twittered, “Oho! little golden bird, and who are you?”

I knew that a street sparrow’s eyes are everywhere, so I was not surprised on looking up to see a male bird, with quite a pretty black throat patch, sitting on a limb above me.

“I am a canary,” I said.

“I know that,” he replied, rather impatiently, “but how is it that you are so strong of wing? You fly like a wild bird.”

“I have not always been in the bird-room,” I said; “I have flown all over the house and exercise has strengthened my wings.”

“Oh, you are the little youngster I have noticed looking from between the window curtains. How is it that you were allowed to leave the bird-room?”

“The canaries call me Dicky-Dick the Rover. At an early age I found the bird-room small,” I said, not wishing to tell him about my troubles with my brother.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nearly a year.”

“What is your name?”

“Richard the Lion-Hearted,” I said, thinking to impress him by its length, “but my mistress says that is too heavy a name for such a tiny bird, so she shortens it to Dicky-Dick and sometimes Dicky-Duck.”

“The Lion-Hearted,” repeated the sparrow. “That name doesn’t suit you. You seem to be a very gentle bird.”

“I am gentle till I am roused,” I said meekly; “then I am a fair fighter. Now, will you tell me what your name is?”

“Chummy Hole-in-the-Wall.”

This beat my name, and I said, “That’s a double, double surname.”

“Yes,” he said proudly. “It’s a good name, given to me by all the sparrows of the neighborhood.”

“And may I ask how old you are?”

“Six years.”

“You must be very wise,” I said. “I feel as if I knew a great deal, and I am not one year yet.”

“I know everything about this neighborhood,” he said grandly. “If you wish the life history or habits of any bird here, I can inform you of them.”

“I shall be sure to come to you for information,” I said. Then I asked anxiously, “What are the birds like in this street?”

“Pretty decent, on the whole. There were some bad sparrows and two ugly old pigeons, but we had a midwinter drive, and chased them all down in St. John’s ward, where the common birds live. You know we sparrows have our own quarters all over this city.”

“Have you?” I said. “Like big bird-rooms?”

“Yes, my little sir, we in this district near the gray old university are known as the Varsity sparrows. We are bounded on the north by Bloor Street, on the south by College Street, on the east by Yonge Street, and on the west by Spadina Avenue, and this is the worst street of all for food.”

“I have heard that this has been a very hard winter for all birds,” I said.

“It has been perfectly terrible. It snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed. Every scrap of food was under a white blanket. If it hadn’t been for covers left off trash cans, and a few kind people who threw out crumbs, the sparrows would all have died.”

“The snow is going now,” I said, with a smile.

He laughed a queer, hard little sparrow laugh, and looked up and down the street. The high rounded snow banks were no longer white and beautiful, but grimy and soot-laden, and they were weeping rivers of dusky tears. The icy sidewalks were so slippery with standing water that ladies and children went into the street, but it was not much better there, and often they lost their rubbers, which went sailing down the streams like little black boats.

However, up in the blue heaven, the sun was shining, and there was warmth in it, for this was February and spring would soon be with us.

I looked up and down the street. It seemed very quaint to me, and I stretched out my neck to find out whether I could see the end of it. I could not. It went away up, up toward a hill with trees on it, and, as I found out later, away down south to a big lake where the wharves are, and the ships and the railroads, and the noise and the traffic, and also a lovely island that I had heard the Martins say was a fine place for a summer outing.

The sparrow was watching me, and at last he said, “How do you like it out here?”

“Very much,” I said. “It is so big and wonderful, and there are so many houses standing away back from the street. I thought there were no houses in the world but just the Martins’, and those I could see from their windows.”

He smiled at me, but said nothing, and I went on, “And the trees are so enormous and so friendly. I love to see them reaching their gaunt arms across the street to shake hands. Our fir trees in the bird-room will seem very small to me now.”

He shook his little dull-colored head. “Alas! the neighborhood is not what it used to be. A few years ago all these were private houses. Now boarding houses and lodging houses and even shops are creeping up from town.”

I didn’t know much about this, but I said timidly, “Isn’t that better for you sparrows? Aren’t there more scraps?”

“No, not so many. When the rich people lived here, we knew what we had to depend on. Either they would feed us, or they would not. Several kind-hearted ladies used to have their servants throw out food for neighborhood birds at a certain hour every day, and your Mrs. Martin has always kept a little dish full of water on her lawn beside the feeding-table. I suppose you have seen that from your bird-room window.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “We canaries used to sit on the window sill on cold mornings and watch Mr. Martin wading through the snow with the nice warm food that his wife was sending out for the birds.”

“These boarding-house and lodging-house people come and go,” the sparrow went on. “Some feed us, and some don’t. Usually we are stuffed in summer, and starved in winter.”

“I have heard Mrs. Martin say,” I observed, “that wild birds should be assisted over bad seasons and fed whenever their natural supply gives out.”

“Sparrows don’t need food in summer,” said Chummy, “because then we expect to do our duty to human beings by eating all the insects we can, and the bad weed seeds.”

I said nothing. I thought I had not known my new friend long enough to find fault with him, but I wanted very much to ask him if he really thought English sparrows did do their duty by human beings.

“Would you like to see my little house?” he asked.

“Very much,” I replied, and I followed him as he flew to another tree. We were now further up the street where we could look back at our red brick house which is a double one, and quite wide. Now we were in front of one that stood a little way from its neighbors. It was tall and narrow, and in the middle of its high north wall was a small hole where a brick had fallen out.

Chummy pointed to it proudly. “There’s not a snugger sparrow bedroom in the city than that,” he said, “for right behind the open place is a hole in the brick work next the furnace chimney. No matter how cold and hungry I am when I go to bed, I’m kept warm till breakfast time, when I can look for scraps. Many a feeble old sparrow and many a weak one has died in the bitter cold this winter. They went to bed with empty crops and never woke up. We’ve had twelve weeks of frost, instead of our usual six, and this is only the fifth day of thawing weather that we’ve had all winter.”

“Everything seems topsy-turvy this winter,” I said. “Human beings are short of coal and food, and they’re worried and anxious. I am very sorry for them.

“But times will improve, Chummy. The old birds say that black hours come, but no darkness can keep the sun from breaking through. He is the king of the world.”

Chummy raised his little dark head up to the sunlight. “I’m not complaining, Dicky. I wish every little bird in the world had such a snug home as mine.”

“How did the hole come in the wall?” I asked.

“Some workmen had a scaffold up there to repair the top of the chimney. When they took it down, they knocked a brick out.”

“Is it large enough for you in nesting time?”

“Oh, yes; don’t you want to come and see it? You’re not afraid?”

“Oh, no,” I said warmly. “I know whenever I get a good look into a bird’s eye whether I can trust him or not.”

“Come along, then,” said Chummy, deeply gratified, and I flew beside him to his little house.