CHAPTER XIV

BILLIE AND I HAVE ONE OF OUR TALKS

Mrs. Martin has a great deal of work to do for soldiers. The dear woman never gets tired of going to hospitals, and the day after Billie had told Chummy and me the story of her life our Missie left home quite early.

I felt lonely, so I called to Billie who was curled up on the sofa, “You are certainly the sleepiest dog I ever saw.”

Billie blinked at me. “I am the most tired dog that ever lived. It seems to me I will never make up the sleep I lost during the first part of my life, when the children’s feet were always making earthquakes under me in the bed. Then you must remember that Mrs. Martin gives me lovely long walks.”

“And you take lovely long ones yourself,” I said suspiciously. “I believe you have been foraging in back yards this very day.”

Billie gave a heavy sigh. “A neglected pup makes a disobedient dog, Dicky-Dick.”

“And our Mary gave you a heaping plate of food for your lunch, Billie,” I went on. “You’re like that Tommy boy at the corner. He only minds his mother half the time, and Chummy says it’s because he had his own way too much when he was a little fellow.”

“I know I’m forbidden to eat in the neighbors’ yards,” said Billie, “but what can I do? My paws just ache—they carry me where I don’t want to go.”

“But why don’t you come home when you’re called? I was up on the roof the other day, and heard Mrs. Martin whistling for you, and you stayed stuffing yourself by a trash can. Why didn’t you mind her?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You heard her, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, quite plainly. I never was deaf.”

“It’s a mystery,” I said. “I see how you can be a little bad, but I don’t see how you can be so very bad. You knew Mrs. Martin would give you some good taps when you got back—and you pretend to be so fond of her.”

“I just love her,” said Billie warmly. “She may beat me all day if she likes.”

“She doesn’t like,” I said, “and you know it. She hates to give pain.”

Billie curled her lip in a dog smile. “You don’t understand, Dicky-Dick. You were brought up in a proper way, and it’s no trouble for you to mind, and then, anyway, it’s easier for a bird to be good than a dog.”

“Easier!” I exclaimed. “Don’t I want to disobey? I’m crazy to go next door and see that little canary, Daisy, in her tiny cage, but our Mary and Mrs. Martin warned me about the treacherous cat in the house.”

“So you have troubles,” said Billie.

“Yes, I have—and mine are worse than yours—it’s dreadful to be lonely.”

“Lonely, in a nice, lively house like this; with plenty of animals and human beings about you, and that fine bird-room upstairs to visit! Dicky-Dick, you are ungrateful.”

“You don’t understand about the bird-room,” I said. “I’ve got weaned away from it. I can’t live there steadily. The birds are suspicious of me, and will not let any of the young ones play with me. I really have no bird society.”

“You have Chummy.”

“A street sparrow—he is good as far as he goes, but he only opens up one side of my nature. I am a highly cultured bird, whose family has been civilized for three hundred and fifty years.”

“I didn’t know your family was as old as that,” said Billie.

“Indeed it is—we are descended from the wild birds of the Canary Islands and Madeira, but canaries are like Jews, they have spread all over the world and have become parts of many nations. I am not boasting, Billie. I am merely stating a fact.”

“Well,” said Billie, going back to what I had first said, “I never dreamed you were lonely. Why don’t you sing a little song about it to our Mary, or her mother, and they will get you another bird from downtown to play with.”

“I want Daisy, and didn’t I sit for an hour this morning with my throat puffed out, singing about her to our good Missie as she sat sewing?”

“And what did she say?”

“Yes, Dicky-Dick—I know all about your little lonely cage, and the spring coming, and how you would like to have a playmate; and if you’ll wait till I get my next month’s allowance I’ll try to buy Daisy for you, for I think she’s neglected in that lodging house.”

“Then what are you squealing about now?” asked Billie.

“Nothing—I just want you to know that birds have troubles and things to put up with, as well as dogs.”

“Everybody has troubles,” said Billie. “There’s something the matter with good Mr. Martin. He sighs when his wife is not in the room, and his eyes are troubled—Dicky-Dick, I’m going to sleep again.”

“Oh, no, Billie,” I said; “keep awake and talk to me. Wouldn’t you like to hear a story about a canary that belonged to a friend of our Mary? It could talk and said quite well, ‘Baby! Baby!’”

Billie became wide awake. “Nonsense!” she said sharply. “Canaries can’t talk.”

“Billie dear,” I said gently, for I was afraid of rousing her temper, which is pretty quick sometimes, “you have lived in a very quiet way, and you have traveled only from New York to Toronto. How can you know everything about canaries?”

“I used to know one in the café,” said Billie sharply, “a little green fellow with a top-knot. He died after a while. The smoke from the men’s pipes killed him.”

“And did you know another one?”

“Yes, the grocer at the Four Corners had a yellow one, but he never talked. I mean real talk that human beings could understand. Of course, we animals have our own language that people don’t know at all. In fact, we can talk right before them, and they don’t know it.”

“Then you have known two canaries only in your life,” I said, “and yet you lay down rules about them. Do you know that there are Scotch Fancy canaries with flat snakelike heads and half circle bodies, and big English canaries, notably the Manchester Coppy?”

“What’s that?” asked Billie. “It sounds like a policeman.”

“Well, the Coppy is a policeman among canaries, for he has an enormous body, often eight inches long. His coloring is lovely, and his head most imposing. Coppy comes from crest, or copping, our Mary says. Then there are the Belgian canaries, all sharp angles. They are very sensitive birds, and their owners do not handle them, but touch them with little sticks when they wish them to step from one cage to another.”

“You’re of English descent, aren’t you?” asked Billie.

“Of mixed English and American blood. English people breed their birds for looks and coloring.”

Billie began to snicker.

I was going to be annoyed with her, then I thought, “What’s the use?” So I said quite pleasantly, “I know I’m not English in that way. I am more like a German canary. Germans don’t care how a bird looks if he sings well.”

“Is there a French canary?” inquired Billie.

“Oh, yes, a very pretty little bird with whorls of feathers on its breast and sides—now, Billie, I haven’t time to tell you all the other kinds of canaries. I will go back to what I was going to say. My father, who has seen hundreds of canaries, for he was a show bird before our Mary got him, says that if trainers will have patience with young birds they can teach them to say certain things. Why, right in your own United States was a canary who talked.”

“Where?” asked Billie.

“In Boston. A lady had a canary that she petted very much. He used to light on her head when she was knitting and pull her hair.”

“Why did he do that foolish thing?” asked Billie.

“He wished her to play with him. She would shake her knitting needle at him and say, ‘Fly high, Toby, fly high.’

“To her surprise, the bird one day repeated her words. ‘Fly high, Toby, fly high.’ She at once began to train other young birds, and made quite a good living at teaching short sentences to them, but it took a great deal of patience. So you see, if human beings spent more time in teaching us, we’d be more clever.”

Billie looked dreadfully. “Don’t speak about training birds and animals too much, Dicky-Dick. It makes me shudder. If you knew what horrible things are done to animals who appear in public.”

“I do know,” I said. “I’ve heard shocking tales from Chummy, told him by downtown pigeons.”

“Once,” said Billie, “I met a strange dog looking for food on the dumps. You never saw such a scarecrow, and he was frightened of his own shadow. He told me he had run away from The Talented Terrier Traveling Troupe. He said his life had been simply awful. A big man used to stand over him with a whip, and make him mount ladders and hang by his paws and do idiotic things that no self-respecting dog should be required to do.”

“Billie,” I said, “I do know about these things, and the whole subject is so affecting to me that I often have nightmare over it. I dare not tell you the horrible things they sometimes do to the little performing birds you see on the stage. Starvation is one of the least dreadful ways of making them do their tricks.”

“Why do human beings who are often so sensible allow this wickedness?” asked Billie wistfully.

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I said. “It breaks my heart to think of little gentle birds and nice dogs and cats and monkeys and other creatures being hurried from city to city in little stuffy traveling boxes, and whipped on to a stage, and made to bow and act silly to please great theaters full of people who applaud and praise, and don’t know what they’re doing. If they did know, if the great big kind-hearted public knew what those smooth-looking men in the long-tailed coats do to their animals behind the scenes, they would get up in a body and walk out whenever an animal act is put on the stage.”

“That’s the best way to put these fellows out of business,” said Billie warmly. “Let no one patronize their shows. Then they would have to earn their living in some honest way—but there is Chummy at the window. I wonder what’s happened.”

We both looked at the little fellow as he stood by the open window.

“News! News!” said Chummy, flapping his little dusky wings. “New arrivals in the neighborhood—a boy and a girl and their parents in the yellow boarding-house.”

“Some canaries are afraid of strange children,” I said, “because they come so close and poke their fingers at them, but I can always get away from them.”

“I like children,” said Chummy, “for if they have food, they nearly always throw some to me.”

“There are very few children in this neighborhood,” I said.

“Yes, because there are so few private houses. Come on out and see them, Dicky.”

“If you will excuse me,” I said to Billie. “I will talk to you some other time on this subject of performing animals.”

Billie grumbled something between her teeth. Now that I was called away, she wanted me to stay.

“You come out, too, dear Billie,” I said. “If you do not, I will stay with you.”

Billie got up and sauntered out of the room and downstairs to the sidewalk where she sat down in the sun, on a black snow-bank, which had become that color in the long thaw we were having.