CHAPTER XVIII

NELLA, THE MONKEY

While I sat dozing in my cage a yelp from Billie wakened me, and I flew to the window where she stood on her chair barking at something in the street.

Mrs. Martin stood out on the sidewalk showing something under her coat to the lodging house landlady.

“Missie has something alive there,” said Billie; “I know it. She is bringing it in.”

“Well,” I said a little crossly, “why make such a fuss and wake me out of what was going to be a nice nap?”

Billie was trembling in every limb. “It’s something strange, Dicky-Dick. I can’t tell you how I feel.”

“Probably it’s a new dog,” I said. “Some one is always giving Missie one.”

“It’s no dog,” said Billie; “it’s no dog. Oh, I feel so queer! Something peculiar is going to happen.”

I stared at her curiously. Billie is a very sensitive creature. Then I listened for Missie to come in.

Presently the door opened. “Well, my pets,” said Mrs. Martin heartily, “what do you think your Missie has brought you now?”

Billie looked terribly, but she ran to her dear mistress and fawned on her, casting meanwhile very nervous looks at the bulge in her coat.

“A present for you, Billie,” said Mrs. Martin, “a dear companion. I hope you will like her,” and opening her coat, she set on the floor an apparently nice little monkey.

Billie gave a gasp and the monkey a squeal. They knew each other. Even Mrs. Martin saw this. “Why, Billie!” she exclaimed. Then she watched the monkey running up to Billie, putting her arms round her, jabbering and acting like a child that has found its mother.

Billie did not like it, I saw, but she stood firm. “Where have you known each other?” said Mrs. Martin. Then with a touching and almost comical earnestness, she said, “Oh, why can I for once not understand all that my pets are saying? Billie, you are telling Dicky-Dick something, I know by the way he puts his little head on one side, but, Dicky, whatever have you done with your tail? Mary, oh, Mary, come here!”

Our dear Mary came hopping to the room.

“Look at our Dicky-Dick,” said her mother. “Our little pet has lost his tail. What can this mean?”

Our Mary was puzzled. “No cat could get at him,” she said; “he is too smart to be caught. It must have been another bird.”

“Oh, why can’t we understand?” said Mrs. Martin intensely, and she stared hard at Billie. “Tell me, my dog, how did our Dicky lose his tail.”

Billie, put on her mettle, ran to the window, looked out at the trees and barked wildly.

Our Mary spoke quickly. “That is the way Billie acts when she chases the red squirrel in the Tyrells’ lodging house. He is the only creature in the neighborhood that she chases, so she knows as well as we do that he is very naughty.”

“Billie,” said Mrs. Martin earnestly, “did the red squirrel pull Dicky-Dick’s tail out?”

“Bow, wow, wow!” barked Billie, raising her forelegs from the ground as she spoke. “Oh, bow, wow, wow!”

Mrs. Martin looked very much disturbed. “Then that seals his doom. I have heard that he has done a great deal of damage to the woodwork in Mrs. Tyrell’s house. We will take measures to have him disposed of, if she is willing. Now, to come back to the monkey—by the way, where is she?”

“Unraveling your sock, under the table,” said our Mary, with a laugh, and, sure enough, there sat Mrs. Monkey with a heap of wool on the floor beside her.

Mrs. Martin swooped down on her. “Would you have believed it! Three hours’ work undone in three minutes! I should have watched her. Now, to come back to Billie—my dog, you have not known any monkeys since you came to me. You must have been acquainted with this one before I got you. Perhaps you belonged to some Italians in the Bronx neighborhood, and one of them owned a little monkey.”

I could not help interposing an excited little song here, for that was just what Billie was telling me and what the monkey was jabbering about. Angelina and Antonio, who owned Billie, had an uncle Tomaso who was an organ-grinder. He used to visit them and bring his monkey, and the little creature became acquainted with Billie.

“And now let me tell you, Billie, my share in this,” said Mrs. Martin. “A week ago I was going along College Street where an organ-grinder was droning out ‘Spring, Gentle Spring,’ and his monkey was collecting cents, when an automobile skidded and struck the poor man. He was taken to the General Hospital near by, and I took the monkey to the Humane Society on McCaul Street. I have visited the man since and taken him delicacies, and last night he died. He had no friends here, and as a token of gratitude he gave me his monkey. I have brought it to you, Billie, for a playmate, but it is only a trial trip, and if you and monkey don’t get on, I will take her to the Riverdale Zoo.”

Billie’s eyes grew dull; she shook her head nervously, and tried not to groan. Nella, the monkey, was squeezing her so tightly round the waist that she was nearly frantic. “Sister, sister,” the monkey was saying, “Nella is glad to see you. She has been so lonely.”

“Billie, Billie,” I sang, “be kind, be kind; monkeys have rights, monkeys have rights.”

“She has no right to squeeze the life out of me and tickle me,” squealed Billie. “I never liked her. She is queer. I like dogs and birds.”

“Be good, be good,” I sang encouragingly.

“And you be careful,” said Billie irritably. “She would kill you in an instant if she got her paws on you. You don’t know monkeys. They’re not civilized like dogs.”

Fresh from my adventure with the squirrel, I felt a bit cautious. “What shall I do, Billie?” I sang. “What shall I do, do, do?”

“Fly upstairs to the bird-room,” said Billie, who, in the midst of all her nervousness, was taking thought for me, “and stay there till Nella goes. She is very mischievous. You’ll see that Missie can’t keep her.”

“Could I stay here if I kept in my cage?” I asked.

“No, no!” barked Billie impatiently. “You just ought to see her climb. She would swarm up those picture frames and leap to your cage, and have her fingers on your throat in no time. Fly upstairs, I tell you. Fly quickly, before Mrs. Martin goes out of the room.”

“I fly, I fly,” I sang, and when Mrs. Martin opened the door to go and get some fruit for Mrs. Monkey I dashed upstairs and sat on the electrolier in the upper hall till our Mary came along and opened the bird-room door for me.

Such a chattering and gabbling arose among the canaries on my entrance! “Why, look at Dicky-Dick! Where’s your tail, Dicky? Surely he has had a bad fight with some bird, or was it an accident? Tell us, Dicky; tell us, tell, tell.”

Even the parakeets and the gentle indigo birds and nonpareils called out to me, “Speak, speak quick! Who hurt you?”

Not since I left the bird-room and took up my quarters downstairs had I been so glad to get back to it. Many of these birds were my relatives. They might tease me, and there might be jealousies between us, but they were my own kind, and they would never, never treat me as a squirrel would, or a monkey. So I told them the whole story.

They all put their heads on one side and listened, and it was amusing to hear what they said when I had finished my tale of woe. This was the substance of it, “Better stay home, better stay home; the world is bad, is bad to birds, bad, bad, bad.”

“But the bird-room life seems narrow to me,” I said. “You don’t know how narrow it is till you get out of it.”

Green-Top had been looking at me quite kindly till I said this, when he called out, “He’s making fun of us, making fun, fun, fun.”

Norfolk, my father, began to bristle up at this, so did my cousins and my young brothers, Pretty-Boy and Cresto and Redgold. They seemed to take my remarks more to heart than the birds that weren’t related to me.

My uncle Silver-Throat, however, slipped up to me and whispered, “You talk too much. Hold your tongue,” and fortunately just at this moment our Mary, who had been filling seed dishes, created a sensation that turned their thoughts from me.

“Birdies,” she said, “western New York is sending us a lovely warm breeze over old Lake Ontario. I think we can celebrate this warm day by opening the screen into our new flying cage.”

What an excitement that made! The birds all twittered and chattered, and flew round her, as she went to the big window and, unhooking the wire screen, allowed us to go out to the sun-flooded roof.

Despite my tailless condition, I was the first out and got a good rap from my father for it, for as the oldest inhabitant of the bird-room, he should have taken precedence of every one.

My uncle, who followed me, was laughing. “You are a gentle bird, Dicky-Dick, but you will have trouble as long as you live. All birds of your class do.”

“What is my class?” I asked.

“Explorers, adventurers, rovers, birds who will not stay at home and rest in the parental nest. They flutter their wings and fly, and a hawk is always hovering in the sky.”

“I have lots of fun,” I said.

“No doubt, but take care that you do not lose your life.”

“Excuse me, dear uncle,” I said, “there is my friend, Chummy Hole-in-the-Wall, he has important news for me.”

“Don’t you think, as you are away from your family so much, that it would be polite to stay with them a little while, and let those outsiders alone?”

“I will come back to them,” I said; “I must see Chummy now, I must, I must,” and, singing vivaciously, I flew to a corner where Chummy was perched on the wire netting, looking down at us.

“What news, what news?” I sang.

“Great news,” he chirped; “but what a fine place this is for the birds! Almost as good as having the whole street. It is lovely to see them out.”

“You would not like it,” I said, “nor would I; but they do.”

“Like it,” he said, with a shudder, “I should go wild if I were confined like this; but to canaries it must seem enormous. See how excitedly they are flying about.”

“Tell me about Great King Crow,” I said.

Chummy smiled. “I found him sitting on a big pine tree. He had been holding court, but it was over. Down below him on the ground was a dead young crow.”

“Had he killed it?” I asked, in a shocked voice.

“Oh, no, but he had ordered it killed.”

“What had it done?”

“Would not do sentry go.”

“What is that?”

“While crows are feeding, one of their number is always supposed to watch from the top of a high tree and warn if danger approaches. This young crowling was greedy and always wanted to eat. They warned him, but he would not obey; then they killed him.”

“And what did the Great King say about Squirrie?”

“He will see the head of Squirrie’s clan to-morrow morning—the Big Red Squirrel—and they will decide what to do.”

“Why did you not go to see the Big Red Squirrel yourself?” I asked.

“I was afraid to. I fear squirrels as a class, though there are many single ones that I like—Chickari, for example, who never hurt a sparrow in his life.”