Golden Dicky, The Story of a Canary and His Friends

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.”

CHAPTER XXI
MORE ABOUT SISTER SUSIE

He kissed her and our Mary and hurried away. We turned our attention to Sister Susie, who, refreshed by her nap, was cooing and bowing very prettily to Mrs. Martin.

Such tricks as she played later on, on our good Missie! One day, when Mrs. Martin was presiding at a Red Cross meeting and begging ladies to give more money for wounded soldiers, she was first amazed, then overcome with laughter, to hear “Coo, oo-ooo—” coming from the knitting bag that she had brought in and put on the table before her.

Sister Susie thought all knitting bags were nests, and went into them and often laid eggs there. Mrs. Martin was trying to get a mate for her, but had not yet succeeded, so Daisy and I had her eggs boiled, and found them very good eating.

Sister Susie collected lots of money for the soldiers. When she cooed, that day at the meeting, Mrs. Martin lifted her out and put her beside the money box. She bowed and murmured so gently and coaxingly beside it that she charmed the money right out of the ladies’ pockets. That gave Missie the idea of taking her to the meetings, and finally she had a little box made in the shape of a dove, and Susie would stand beside it, and peck it, and coo, and ladies would fill it with money.

“Does Susie think it is a dove?” Billie asked me one day.

“Oh, no, she knows what it is; but doves like fun, as well as other birds, and it amuses her to beat it. One day she played a fine trick on Missie. She stepped in a knitting bag and went to sleep and Missie put it on her arm and went downtown. She noticed that the girl in a department store, who waited on her, looked queerly at her bag, and bye and bye she asked Missie if she was not afraid her pet would fly away.

“Mrs. Martin looked round, and there was Sister Susie with her head sticking out of the hole in her Red Cross bag.

“She took her out and set her on the palm of her hand. ‘You won’t leave me, will you, Susie?’ she said. ‘You want to stay with me, don’t you?’

“You see, she always had to ask questions that Susie could say ‘Yes’ to, for the bird did not know how to say ‘No.’

“‘Coo-ooo, oo,’ said Susie, a great many times and bowing very low and very politely.

“The girl was so delighted that she squealed with laughter, and other girls came to see what was amusing her. Mrs. Martin went on talking and Susie cooed so sweetly that there was soon a crowd round them.

“Missie asked her if she liked the store, and if she thought the people who came shopping could not afford to do a little more for Red Cross work.

“Susie was charmed to receive so much attention and the enthusiasm of the shoppers was so great that a manager came out of an office to see what the excitement was about. He asked if Missie would sell her bird for him to put in a cage to please the shoppers.

“Missie wheeled round to a woman who was carrying a baby and asked her if she would sell it.

“‘Not for a thousand dollars,’ she said. ‘My baby loves me.’

“‘And my bird loves me,’ said Mrs. Martin, ‘and I would not sell her for a thousand dollars, though I thank you, Mr. Manager, for your offer.’

“‘What theater do you exhibit her in?’ asked one of the women.

“That gave Missie a chance to tell them that she was not a bird-trainer. She was just a friend to birds and allowed them to develop along their own lines.

“The woman said that her husband had once been in the business and had exhibited trained dogs and horses, but she had made him give it up, when she discovered that his animals were all dull and dispirited, and that he educated them by means of sharp nails between his fingers that he pressed into them when he was pretending to stroke them.

“‘I caught him one day pulling out the teeth of a pony,’ she said, ‘because the pony bit him, and I tell you I gave him a tongue-lashing—and I threw out a can of paint that he used to cover the sores on his animals’ backs. “Let the public see the sores, me man,” I said, “and it’s good-bye to me if you don’t give up every one of those poor creatures. If I’d known you were in such a dirty business I’d never have married you.” So he said he’d keep me, being as I was the choicest and trickiest animal he had, and the best kicker, and I bet you I soon sent that lot of animals flying to good homes in the country, and I got him a position as policeman, going to His Worship the Mayor me own self an’ tellin’ a straight story to him that I said is the father of the city.’

“Susie liked this woman and made a great many direct bows to her which pleased her very much.

“‘God bless the little angel-faced creetur,’ she said. ‘She reminds me of me own mother in glory—well, good-bye to ye, me lady, an’ good luck to the bird. I must hurry home an’ make a toothsome dish for me old man’s dinner, for it’s bound to please him, I am, since he gave up his beasts to please me.’

“When she left, the floor-walker gently urged the other women to pass on and let Mrs. Martin finish her shopping, so she put Sister Susie in the bag she so loved to travel in and went on with her purchases.”

“Some animals have a dreadful time when they travel,” said Billie. “When Missie brought me from New York I heard some cattle talking on the train. One handsome black and white mother cow was saying, ‘My blood runs like poison in my veins, for I have been three days without food or water. If human beings wanted to kill me, why did they not do it away back in Chicago, where I was taken from my baby calf? I pity the human being that eats me! Another bad, black cow said, ‘My tongue is dry and I have lost so much blood by getting bruised and torn in this crowded cattle car that I hope the persons who eat me will die.’”

“If human beings could listen to animals talking,” I said, “they would get some hints.”

“Mrs. Martin understands,” said Billie. “She told me that when our train was standing in the station in Albany the waiter in the dining car brought her two mutton chops. Just as she was going to eat them she looked out the car window, and there out on the platform in a crate were two sheep. Fancy, Dicky-Dick—two sheep from a western plain in a case half boarded up in a rushing railway station. Mrs. Martin says they looked at her with their suffering eyes. They never stirred—just showed their agony by their glances, and she pushed away her plate and said to the waiter, ‘Oh, take it away.’”

“Dear Missie,” said Billie affectionately, “she hates to see anything suffer. She saw a poor old horse fall down here in the street to-day, and she went out and gave the owner money enough to take him to the Rest Home for horses.”

“What is that?” I said curiously. “I have not heard about it.”

“I heard the milkman’s horse talking to the grocer’s horse about it two days ago,” said Billie. “It has just been started, and it is a big farm outside the city. The milkman’s horse said to the other horse, ‘You ought to go out there, Tom. Your hoofs are in bad shape, and that moist land down by the creek on the Rest Farm would set you up again finely. Then you could lie down in the shade of the tall trees, and if you were not able to go out at all they would put you in one of the nice clean barns.”

“Will they take tired dogs and birds out there?” I asked.

“They will take anything,” replied Billie. “Back of the brick farm house is a long, low building which is a dog’s boarding house. Any one going away in summer can put a pet animal there and know that it will have a good time roaming over the farm with the men.”

“Cats have a dreadful time,” I said, “when their owners go away and leave them.”

Billie began to laugh, and I said in surprise, “My friend, have you turned heartless about cats?”

“No, no,” said Billie, “but just listen to what Sammy-Sam is saying, as he walks up and down here under the trees.”

I looked at our handsome little lad, as he paced to and fro, a book by a well-known animal lover in his hand. Missie, before she went out this afternoon, had promised him a quarter if he would learn a nice poem for her before she came home, and this is what he chose, and it fitted in so well with what I had been saying that it had made Billie laugh:

“THE WAIL OF THE CAT”

 
“My master’s off to seek the wood,
My lady’s on the ocean,
The cook and butler fled last night,
But where, I’ve not a notion.
The tutor and the boys have skipped,
I don’t know where to find them:
But tell me, do they never think
Of the cat they’ve left behind them?
 
 
“I haven’t any place to sleep,
I haven’t any dinner.
The milkman never comes my way;
I’m growing daily thinner.
The butcher and the baker pass,
There’s no one to remind them:
O tell me, do they never think
Of the cat they’ve left behind them?
 
 
“The dog next door has hidden bones,
They’re buried in the ‘arey’;
The parrot’s boarding at the zoo,
And so is the canary.
The neighbors scatter, free from care,
There’s nothing here to bind them:
I wonder if they never think
Of the cat they’ve left behind them?”
 

CHAPTER XXII
A TALKING DOG

OUR Mary, on account of her lameness, has a little bedroom downstairs, just back of the dining room. Her mother does not worry about her being down there alone, for Billie always sleeps beside her bed in a box, and if any strange step is heard in the hall, or outside the open window, she gives her queer half bark, half scream, and rouses the family.

Our Mary used to have a young dog of her own to sleep beside her, a mongrel spaniel, but to her great grief some one stole the dog a year ago, and she has never known what became of it.

One day when I was talking to Billie about sleeping downstairs she told me that she would far rather be upstairs with Mrs. Martin, but at the same time she is very glad to do something to oblige our Mary, whom everybody loves.

“If any stranger dares to come near her room at night,” said Billie, “I’ll scream my head off. I hate night prowlers. They’re after no good. The Italians always locked up at nine o’clock and said that any one not in bed then was a thief.”

“But, Billie,” I said, “that is rather severe. Many nice persons are out after nine.”

“Well, I’ll bark at them,” she said stubbornly, “and if they’re honest it won’t hurt them, and if they’re rogues they’ll be caught.”

Poor Billie—on the night our Mary had her adventure with what she thought was a prowler she was in a dogs’ hospital. They had been having lobster à la Newburg at the boarding house, and the remains in the trash can were too attractive for Billie, and she had to go away to be dosed. How she reproached herself afterward, and vowed she would never go near a trash can again!

It had been a very dark afternoon, and was a very black night. A thunderstorm was brooding over the city, and our Mary, though not at all nervous, for she is a very brave girl, had said to please her mother that she would sleep upstairs.

“I will undress down in my own room, though,” she said, “then put on my dressing-gown and come up.”

About ten o’clock she was just going to turn out the electric light when she heard something moving softly on the veranda outside her window. Turning out the light, she picked up a good-sized bell she kept on the table at the head of her bed and approached the window.

“Are you a tramp?” she said cautiously.

There was a kind of groan in reply to this, but no one spoke.

“I want you to go away,” she said sternly, “or I shall ring this bell and my father will come down and turn you away pretty quickly. Do you hear?”

The thing groaned again, and she heard a beseeching murmur, “Jus’ a crumb—jus’ a crumb.”

“A crumb!” she said indignantly. “I suppose you have been drinking too much. Go away, you scamp.”

The thing gave a kind of flop and she saw two red eyes gleaming at her. Dropping the bell, she fled from the room, calling wildly, “Daddy! Daddy!”

Mr. Martin, who was just undressing, came leaping down the stairs like a boy. “What is it—where is it?” he cried.

“Out on the veranda—right in the corner by the table. Oh, Daddy, it has such a dreadful voice!”

Mr. Martin snatched a big walking stick from the hat-stand in the hall and rushed into the bedroom. There was nothing there, so he jumped through the window to the veranda. Nothing there, either, but at this moment there was such a heavy peal of thunder that he sprang in again and locked the window behind him.

“We are going to have a deluge,” he said. “The tramp must have taken himself off. I see nothing of him.”

“He couldn’t have got into the house, could he?” said Mrs. Martin, who by this time had appeared and had her arm round Mary.

“No, no—Mary stood in the hall till I came. He could not have passed her, and he is not in the room.”

He looked about him as he spoke. The room was in perfect order except the bed, which was tumbled and tossed.

Our Mary suddenly gave a scream. “The bed—I never touched it! He is in it—there’s a lump there. Father, take care.”

“Go to the hall,” said Mr. Martin, “you two—leave me to deal with him.”

Mrs. Martin drew back her arm from Mary and pushed her out into the hall, then she went to stand by her husband. She would not leave him alone.

I heard every detail of this adventure a few minutes later, in the sitting room, and I was quite thrilled at this part where Mrs. Martin stood pushing her child out into the hall with one hand and extending the other to her husband.

He was afraid she would get hurt and, hurrying to her, was about to urge her to go upstairs when more thunder and lightning came.

The crashing and flashing were so dreadful that they made Daisy nestle anxiously against me in our cage. We had been awake for some time, listening to the unusual and strange sounds below.

All at once we heard Mr. Martin cry out, “Mary—run—he’s coming!”

Every light in the house had gone out. The lightning had struck the power house downtown, but we could hear our Mary tearing upstairs faster than she had ever come before. The lameness was not in her feet, which were quite well shaped and pretty, but in her hips. The doctor said afterward that the sudden fright was bad for her nerves but an excellent thing for her hips, for her lameness has been ever so much better since. Well, Daisy and I heard her rushing upstairs, darting into the sitting room and flinging herself on a sofa there.

She knew just where everything was, though the room was pitch dark. “Oh, mother,” she cried, “oh, father—what a coward I am! Why didn’t I stay?”

Then we heard her mother’s clear voice, “Mary, Mary, my child—are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, Mummy dear,” she cried; “but, oh, do come up! Where is Daddy?”

“Down in the cellar after the tramp. He flew by us to the kitchen. Hester had forgotten and left the cellar door open. Shut and lock the door of the room you are in. I will be right up.”

Our poor Mary did as she was bid, and as we heard afterward, Mrs. Martin followed her husband to the cellar. As the tramp had not shown fight, they were not afraid of him, and they said afterward they knew he must be a slight, frail creature, perhaps only a boy, for he dashed by so quickly and smoothly, and bent over as if he were on all fours.

Well, by the time they got a lantern and went down into their big, old-fashioned cellar, Mr. Tramp was nowhere to be seen. There is a great deal of stuff in our cellar. I went down there one day on our Mary’s shoulder. There are trunks and boxes, and plants and barrels, and old furniture, and shelves of china, and a storeroom and coal rooms, and a furnace room, and a lot of other things—a very paradise of hiding places.

No lights would go on yet, so the two Martins poked about with their lantern, passing several times a heap of bearskin rugs that the furnace man had thrown in a corner to shake in the morning.

“Could he be there?” said Mrs. Martin, at last.

“There’s no other place,” said Mr. Martin, and he prodded the rugs with his stick. “Come out, you—we won’t hurt you.”

They heard a touching groan, then “Jus’ a crumb—jus’ a crumb,” in a voice that Mrs. Martin said afterward was hoarse and broken like that of an old man who has been drinking too much all his life.

“Get up, you beggar,” said Mr. Martin, for he was pretty tired and excited by this time. “If you don’t come out, you’ll get a walloping.”

At this and his persistent prodding there crawled from under the rugs, not a battered old man nor a slender boy, but a good-sized mongrel spaniel dog.

Mrs. Martin says that she and her husband literally staggered against the wall. Dog-lovers as they were, they had never heard of such a thing as a dog talking.

Then, when they got over their surprise there was such a shouting. By this time, Hester and Anna were aroused and were running round the top of the house calling out to know what was the matter.

Our Mary unlocked the sitting room door and cried out to them to come down to her, and then Mr. and Mrs. Martin appeared leading between them this big black spaniel.

He was terribly cowed and frightened, but when they held up the lantern and he saw our Mary, he gave a leap at her and buried his head in her lap.

“Why, it’s my Niger,” she screamed, “my darling Niger that was stolen when he was a puppy! Oh, oh, Niger, Niger!”

I never saw anything more affecting. Our Mary was so unstrung that she cried, and her parents stood looking at her with glistening eyes.

“And he’s been in good hands,” she said at last, when she got calm. “See how glossy his hair is, mother dear, and he smells of some exquisite perfume. My darling doggie, where have you been?”

I touched Daisy with my beak. All this would have been hard on Billie if she had been here, for she is of a very jealous nature.

Niger was fagged out. He lay panting and rolling his bright eyes from one to another of the little group. He had evidently run far to get home.

“This is one of the most interesting dog cases I have ever heard of,” said Mrs. Martin. “Just examine that collar under his black curls, and see if there is a name on it.”

Mr. Martin held the lantern up so our Mary could see. “The collar is very handsome,” she said, “studded with some red stones—‘Mrs. Ringworth, Hillcrest,’ is on it.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “Third Cousin Annie!”

Everybody laughed at her comical tone. “Now we’ll have some fun getting the dog away from her,” said Mrs. Martin. “Annie never was known to give up anything that ever belonged to her.”

“And the amazing thing about his talking would appeal to her,” said Mr. Martin gloomily; “she does love to be singular.”

“Why, I remember having her tell me about this dog,” our Missie went on. “Just a year ago I met her downtown and she told me she had just bought a young dog from a man in the street and she had become so fond of him that she was going to take him to California with her—and I told her we had just had a puppy stolen from us. Fancy Niger being both dogs,” and she began to laugh so heartily that her husband and daughter and the maids joined her, and Niger, feeling that he ought to do something, rumbled out, “Jus’ a crumb, jus’ a crumb—crumb—crumb!”

“Bless him, he’s hungry,” said Mr. Martin, and he turned to his wife. “Couldn’t Hester make us some of her nice coffee—I declare I’m thirsty and hungry myself, after all that prancing about our dusty cellar.”

Mrs. Martin pretended to be vexed, and drew herself up proudly. “My cellar is as clean as any housekeeper’s in this neighborhood.”

“Yes, yes, my dear,” laughed Mr. Martin; “I wasn’t censuring. Where there is a furnace there is dust. But the coffee—”

Hester and Anna had already disappeared, and soon they came back with the coffee and some lovely fresh doughnuts and bread and butter. Daisy and I had just a tiny scrap of doughnut, but Niger ate half a dozen.

“Mother,” said Mary, “I want to go down and sleep in my little bed with Niger in his box beside me, as he used to do. It will seem like old times.”

“Very well, my child,” said our Missie, and she went downstairs herself, tucked her daughter in bed, and hovered over her like a great bird, for Niger, who at once became friends with us, told us all about it in the morning.

“Would, oh, would Third Cousin Annie leave Niger with us?” was the question, and “What, oh, what would Billie say to him when she came home?”