CHAPTER XV

THE CHILDREN NEXT DOOR

Chummy and I flew up into our favorite elm tree, sat on our feet to keep them warm, and stared at the boarding house. A taxi was standing before the front door, and two children were running up and down the graveled drive, running as if they were glad to be able to stretch their young legs.

“Their parents went in the house,” said Chummy. “They are choosing rooms. I can see them going from window to window. I wonder whether these children will throw me some of the seed cakes they are eating.”

“How little they know that our sharp eyes are on them,” I said.

Chummy clacked his beak together in a bird laugh. “I often think that as I sit here and listen to what persons say as they go up and down the street. If I could tell you the secrets I know! I know a very bad story about that black-haired woman in the red house.”

“I don’t want to hear it, Chummy,” I said. “I dislike gossipy stories.”

“You’re a funny bird,” he said, with a sidelong glance from his queer, tired, yet very shiny eyes.

Suddenly I had a mischievous impulse to sing. “Spring is coming, coming,” I sang, all up and down the scale, then I broke into my latest song that a very early white-throated sparrow was teaching me—“I—love—dear—Canada—Canada—Canada.”

The children were so astonished that they rushed over to the tree and stared up at me.

“Is it a sparrow?” asked the little boy, who was straight and slim and handsome.

The girl, who was big and bouncing and had golden hair and blue eyes, burst into a merry laugh. “Oh, Freddie, whoever heard of a sparrow singing! It’s a wild canary. How I wish we could catch it! I’m going to see if there’s a cage anywhere in the boarding house,” and she ran away.

Her brother came quietly under the tree. “Pretty bird,” he said quietly, “come down and have some of my cake,” and he threw quite a large piece on the ground.

“Fly down, Chummy,” I said, “and get it. What a joke that the little girl thinks I am a wild bird!”

“Lots of grown people make her mistake,” said Chummy. “They speak about seeing wild canaries, when we haven’t such a thing in Canada. They mean yellow summer warblers or goldfinches. Well, I’m going down for the cake.”

The boy stood very still and watched him eat it, so I knew he was a good child.

Presently his little sister came hurrying out of the house with a battered old cage in one hand and something clasped tightly in the other.

“Cook gave me something that she said would be sure to catch the little fellow,” she called out to her brother, “if I can only get near enough to put it on his tail.”

“What is it?” asked the little boy.

“Nice fine white salt. She says the least pinch on his tail will make him as tame as a cat. Stand back, Freddie, till I put the cage on the low branch of this tree. I have some crumbs in it.”

It was amusing to see the two little creatures stand away back in the drive waiting for me to go in the cage.

Chummy was nearly killing himself laughing. “Naughty cook to spring that old joke on these innocents!”

“Would you dare me to go in, and let them put salt on my tail?” I asked.

Chummy was very much taken aback. “You never would, would you?”

“Why not? I never saw a cage yet that could keep me between its bars. I am so slim that I can slip between anything, and you know what a swift flier I am.”

“Go on, then,” said Chummy. “I dare you; but take care you don’t get trapped.”

I made two or three scalloping flights about the children’s heads, as they stood open-mouthed staring at me, then I darted in the open door and pretended to eat the bread crumbs—things I dislike very much.

The little girl screamed with delight and loud enough to frighten the flock of wild geese we had just seen passing overhead on their way north. Then she ran to the branch, took the cage off, and sticking her chubby young hand in the door, eagerly sprinkled a generous handful of moist salt on my tail.

I kept my head down, so none of it would go in my beak, and cast a glance up at Chummy, who was sitting on his branch, rocking with laughter. Some of the neighborhood sparrows were with him now, staring their eyes out at me, and up on the roof Slow-Boy, the pompous old pigeon, was bending over the edge to look at me, with the most amusing expression I had ever seen on the face of a bird.

I felt full of fun, and pretended to be quite happy in my new home. Hopping up on the perch, I gazed at the little girl with twinkling eyes.

Children are very sharp little creatures. She plunged her own blue eyes deep into mine and said what an older person would never have thought of saying, “Freddie, this bird looks as if he were laughing at me.”

Her brother gave me a long stare; then he said, with a puzzled face, “Sure—he’s laughing. What makes him laugh?”

“He’s planning to fly away,” she said, with amazing promptness. “Let’s take him in the house.”

This did not suit my plans at all. I had no desire for a further acquaintance with Black Thomas, so I promptly flew between the bars of the cage, and, lighting on a near-by shrub, favored the children with one of my best songs.

They were delighted, and old Thomas, who had been watching the whole performance from some hole or corner, came out on the front doorstep, and said, “Meow! Meow!” a great many times.

Of course the children did not understand him, but I did. He was saying to me, “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, to fool the children in my house? Hold on, I’ll get you some day.”

At this, Billie who had been fussing about on her snowbank in great anxiety, came forward. “If you ever touch that little bird, or even frighten him, Black Thomas, I’ll choke you to death.”

Thomas made a terrible face and began to spit at her, and I called out, “Serves you right, you old murderer! We’ll both attend your funeral. What is that behind you?”

He looked over his shoulder, then he ran away. It was the dead body of Johnny White-Tail, one of Chummy’s sparrow friends. He had been ailing for some time, and probably Thomas had sprung on him while he sat moping and killed him.

Chummy gave a cry of dismay and flew to the steps. This attracted the children’s attention and, seeing the dead bird, they exclaimed, “Oh, poor birdie, poor birdie—let’s bury him!”

“I’ll go in the house and get some grave clothes out of my trunk,” said the little girl whose name was Beatrice.

“And I’ll be the parson and go borrow a book,” said the boy.

Just at this moment, Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo came down the street with their school bags in hand.

Their bright eyes soon caught sight of the newcomers, and it was amusing to see them getting acquainted.

They walked round each other and stared at each other, and finally spoke and soon the strangers were exhibiting the dead sparrow, and said they were going to have a funeral.

“Why, that’s Albino,” said Sammy-Sam.

I must explain that the children did not know our names for each other. We could not tell them that the white-tailed bird was called Johnny by us.

“And we’ve fed him all winter at the birds’ table in the yard,” said Lucy-Loo. “Auntie will be sorry that he is dead.”

“You needn’t trouble burying him,” said Sammy-Sam to the strangers. “He’s our bird. We’ll dig his grave.”

Young Beatrice rudely snatched the sparrow’s dead body from Sammy-Sam. “He’s ours,” she said; “we found him. I’m going to dress him in some of my best dolly’s clothes, and bury him with words and music.”

Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo looked pretty cross, but they said nothing. They had had weeks of training from their good aunt, who had told them over and over again that children must have good hearts and good manners, or they will never get on in the world.

While Beatrice ran in the house Freddie pointed up to the elm where I was now sitting beside Chummy. “We caught that wild canary up in the tree. We had him in a cage, but he flew away.”

Our own children stared up at us, and exclaimed together in tones of dismay, “You caught our Dicky-Dick.”

“Yes, in that cage,” and he pointed to the old thing.

Sammy-Sam’s face was furious and, throwing down his bag, he began to pull at his smart little overcoat. He was a great fighter, and had whipped all the boys his size in the neighborhood.

Lucy-Loo twitched his sleeve, “He never caught Dicky-Dick. He’s a liar.”

This soothed Sammy-Sam, and he picked up his bag.

“I think we’ll go home, and not wait for the funeral,” he said, “but I tell you, you just let our birds alone. If any boy hurts birds on this street, I’ll fight him. Now there!” and he strutted away, like a little peacock with Lucy-Loo trotting after him and casting backward glances over her shoulder.

Freddie looked puzzled. He had been misunderstood. However, his face brightened when his sister came out with some little lace and muslin rags in her hand, a small black book and a wreath of artificial flowers.

She seemed to be the manager, and said to her brother in a masterful way, “I just thought I’d bring everything. Now help me dress the bird—no, you go dig the grave—we must hurry, for it’s ’most our tea time. Go to the back door for a shovel.”

Freddie did as he was bidden and, finding the frozen earth too hard for his small coal shovel, he dug a good-sized grave in a big snow bank on the lawn.

“Now take the book,” said his sister, “and read the service. I can’t, ’cause I’m a girl.”

“She’d run the city if she could,” said Chummy in my ear. “She’s a terror, is that one.”

The boy with many corrections from his sister mumbled something, then she said, “For hymn we’ll have, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning.’”

Freddie looked shocked. “That’s for soldiers,” he said, “not for funerals.”

“We’ll have ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’” she repeated.

“We’ll have ‘Down in the Deep Black Ground,’” he insisted.

Suddenly she lost her temper, slapped him in the face, threw the flowers at him, and ran into the house.

“Good!” said Chummy. “There’s some stuff in the boy, after all.”

He went on with the service all by himself, sang a dreadful little song, so mournful and horrible that all Johnny’s sparrow relatives who had by this time assembled just quailed under it, then gently laid Johnny in the hole in the snow bank, covered him up, put a shingle at the head of his little grave and the artificial roses on the top, and went in the house.

“Well,” said Chummy, “she didn’t get her own way that time.”

“Hold on,” I said, “here she comes. I notice that little girls usually beat the boys in the long run.”

There she was, the little funny creature, sneaking out of the house by the back door. She crept to the grave, seized the shovel that Freddie had forgotten to return, dug up poor Johnny, tore her doll clothes off him, threw his poor little body on the snow, and ran into the house.

“Well, I vow,” said Chummy. “I wish she could be punished.”

“Hold on,” I said, “look at our children coming. They’ve been watching all the time.”

Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo were galloping out of our yard like two young ponies. They snatched up Johnny’s body and rushed to their aunt with it. I hurriedly said good-bye to Chummy, and flew in the window.

Mrs. Martin heard the whole story. It was perfectly sweet to see her face, as she listened to the children. Then she got a little tin box, wrapped Johnny in a nice piece of white cloth, and told the children that the cover would be soldered on and the furnace man would dig a nice little grave in the corner of the garden which she kept as a graveyard for her pets.

“You will become friends with the children in the boarding house, my dear ones,” she said, “and tell them what you know about birds, for they evidently have not had much to do with them.”