CHAPTER XX

SISTER SUSIE

As time went by, Sammy-Sam and Lucy-Loo became great friends with the children in the boarding house. Sometimes they quarreled, but always they made up, and we birds all noticed that the strange children were becoming almost as good to us as our own dear children were.

One day when it was warm and pleasant Sammy-Sam sat out on the doorstep trying to learn his spelling lesson for the next morning.

He didn’t look very pleasant about it, and he was not helped by having his arm round a neighbor’s dog who looked exactly like Billie and who had come to call on her.

Billie was out, and Sammy-Sam was amusing Patsy when Freddie came running out of the boarding house.

“Listen, Sammy,” he said, “to some poetry I’ve been making about the sparrow who lives in the hole in the wall.”

Sammy-Sam, glad of an excuse to throw down his book, said, “Go ahead.”

Freddie began to read very proudly,

“There was a little bird that lived in a hole Not much bigger than an ordinary bowl, And when it was tired of sitting on its nest It would flutter, flutter out and have a little rest. Now I must end my pretty little song, You can’t be bored, for it isn’t very long.”

“Fine!” said Sammy-Sam, clapping his hands, while I glanced at Chummy, who was sitting listening to it with a very happy sparrow face.

“Good boy,” said Chummy, in a bird whisper. Then he said briskly, “But I have no time to listen to soft words, for I must help Jennie with the nest-building.”

Jennie came along at this minute, such a pretty, dusky, smart little sparrow and very businesslike. She gave Chummy a reproachful glance, as she flew by with her beak full of tiny lengths of white soft twine that she had found outside the flying cage on our roof. She thought we were wasting time.

“And I will go and help with my nest in the big new cage on the sitting-room wall,” I said. “Daisy is turning out to be a fine nest builder. I can’t coax her away from it.”

The windows were all open to the lovely warm air, so I could make a bee-line for my nest. Oh, what a comfort little Daisy was, and is, to me! She is the sweetest, most companionable, gentle little canary I ever saw, and she never makes fun of me as the bird-room canaries do. She thinks whatever I do is just perfect, and she never grumbles if I go to have a little fly outside and am late coming home.

“How are you getting on, dearie, dearie?” I sang, as I found her working away at a heap of nest lining that Mrs. Martin had given us.

“Nicely, nicely,” she said, in her funny, husky little voice. She has been allowed to hang near a cold window in winter, and it has hurt her throat. In summer, she was nearly baked by being kept all the time in the sun, and I tell her she must be a very tough little canary, or she would have been dead before this.

“If you would just whistle a pretty little tune to me, Dicky-Dick,” she said, “while I work, and not interfere; I know just how these tiny, soft bits of cotton go. I must throw out that red stuff; I don’t like bright colors for any nest of mine.”

“Mrs. Martin never put that in,” I said. “It must have been the children. You might put it in the middle of the nest where no strange bird would see it.”

“And suppose it is hot, and I sweat,” she said, “and get the young ones all damp?”

“I don’t think you will perspire, Daisy,” I said. “You are such a cool little bird. I will sing you ‘By a Nice Stream of Water a Canary Bird Sat.’”

“Thank you,” she said, and I, perching on the top of the cage, was beginning one of my best strains, with fine long notes in it, when I heard a well-known footstep in the hall.

It was Mr. Martin coming home in the middle of the morning. What could be the matter with him?

His wife came hurrying out of the bedroom. “Henry, are you ill?”

“No,” he said wearily, passing his hand over his forehead, “but I saw this in the street, and bought it for you,” and he handed her a cardboard box.

Missie opened it, and in the box sat a dear little ring-dove, of a pale, dull, creamy color, and with a black half ring round the nape of the neck.

“Oh, Henry,” she said, “where did you get it?”

“From a man in the street. He had two to sell and one was dying. I took it into a drug store and had it put out of its misery and brought this one home to you.”

“You gentle thing!” said Missie, and, lifting the little creature out of the box, she set hemp seed and water before it.

The dove ate and drank greedily, then finding a place in the sun on the table, flew to it and began cleaning her feathers.

“She is used to strangers,” said Mr. Martin. “She has no fear of us.”

“Henry, you were glad of an excuse to come home,” said Mrs. Martin. “You are tired.”

“A trifle,” he said.

“Have you been losing money?” asked his wife.

“A trifle,” he said again, and this time he smiled.

“These hard times, I suppose,” she said, “and worry.”

He nodded.

“Mary!” she called. “Mary, come here, dear.”

Our Mary came out of her mother’s bedroom with a handful of letters in her hand.

“Tell your father our little secret,” said her mother. “This is a time he wants cheering.”

“I’m earning money,” said our Mary sweetly and with such a happy face.

Mr. Martin’s face lighted up. He was very, very fond of his only child, but we all knew that he was sorry she could not do things that other girls did. “You do not need to do that, child,” he said.

“Out of my birds,” she said with a gay laugh, “those birds that you so kindly provide for, but which I know are a great expense to you in these hard times.”

“Oh, do hurry and tell him, child,” said Mrs. Martin, who was often, in spite of her age and size, just like a girl herself. “Henry, she is earning forty dollars a week by her bird study articles. You know that many people are trying to understand the hidden life of birds and beasts, and Mary is on the track of some wonderful discoveries.”

“Aided a good deal by her mother,” said Mary. “It is really a partnership affair, my father, but I want you to know, because I have thought that perhaps you thought and perhaps our friends thought I ought to give up my birds since times are bearing so heavily on us.”

“But,” said Mrs. Martin triumphantly, “instead of being a burden, the child is earning money, and she is also doing something patriotic in starting a new breed of canary.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Martin, “and what is that breed?”

“The Canadian canary, father,” said our Mary; “you know there has been a canary for nearly every nation, including the American, but no distinctive Canadian bird, so by crossbreeding I am trying to start one.”

“Good! Splendid!” cried Mr. Martin, deeply gratified. “I should like to have my young daughter’s name linked with some original work.”

“‘Martin’s Canadian Canary’ is already beginning to be known,” said Mrs. Martin. “It is not a bird to be kept in tiny cages. It is for aviaries or large cages, and it is trained to fly freely in and out of its home. Canaries in the past have not had enough liberty—but, my dearest husband, have you put the new bird in your pocket?”

The dove had vanished—that is, to human eyes, and Daisy and I laughed, not in our sleeves but in our wings, for a while, before we enlightened them.

Dovey was tired and had stepped into one of the numerous knitting bags with which the house was adorned, for Mrs. Martin, so active and running all over the house, kept a bag with knitting in it in each room.

The bag seemed like a nest to dovey, and she had gone to sleep.

The Martins looked all over the room for her, and in the bedroom, but did not find her till I perched on the bag and began to sing.

How they laughed! “I’m going to call this dove Sister Susie,” said Mrs. Martin, “for I see she is going to do good work for soldiers.”

“Well,” said Mr. Martin, “I must go back to town. I feel like a different man. Somehow or other, this news about Mary has cheered me immensely.”

“Forty dollars a week, forty a week,” said Mrs. Martin, “and we wish no more money for the bird-room.”

“It isn’t the money altogether,” said Mr. Martin.

“Oh, I know, I know,” said Mrs. Martin, with a playful tap on his arm. “I understand you, Henry, and that is the best thing in the world—to be understood and sympathized with. Don’t work too hard and come home early, and we will do some digging in our garden.”