Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders (most important books of all time txt) 📕

sat in the sun, shaking themselves

and picking at their feathers.

 

Miss Laura cleaned each cage, and gave each bird some mixed rape and

canary seed. I heard Carl tell her before he left not to give them much

hemp seed, for that was too fattening. He was very careful about their

food. During the summer I had often seen him taking up nice green things

to them: celery, chickweed, tender cabbage, peaches, apples, pears,

bananas; and now at Christmas time, he had green stuff growing in pots

on the window ledge.

 

Besides that he gave them crumbs of coarse bread, crackers, lumps of

sugar, cuttle-fish to peck at, and a number of other things. Miss Laura

did everything just as he told her; but I think she talked to the birds

more than he did. She was very particular about their drinking water,

and washed out the little glass cups that held it most carefully.

 

After the canaries were clean and comfortable, Miss Laura set their

cages in the sun, and turned to the goldfish. They were in large glass

globes on the window-seat. She took a long-handled tin cup, and dipped

out the fish from one into a basin of water. Then she washed the globe

thoroughly and put the fish back, and scattered wafers of fish food on

the top. The fish came up and snapped at it, and acted as if they were

glad to get it. She did each globe and then her work was over for one

morning.

 

She went away for a while, but every few hours through the day she ran

up to Carl's room to see how the fish and canaries were getting on. If

the room was too chilly she turned on more heat; but she did not keep it

too warm, for that would make the birds tender.

 

After a time the canaries got to know her, and hopped gayly around their

cages, and chirped and sang whenever they saw her coming. Then she began

to take some of them downstairs, and to let them out of their cages for

an hour or two every day. They were very happy little creatures, and

chased each other about the room, and flew on Miss Laura's head, and

pecked saucily at her face as she sat sewing and watching them. They

were not at all afraid of me nor of Billy, and it was quite a sight to

see them hopping up to Bella, She looked so large beside them.

 

One little bird became ill while Carl was away, and Miss Laura had to

give it a great deal of attention. She gave it plenty of hemp seed to

make it fat, and very often the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, and kept a

nail in its drinking water, and gave it a few drops of alcohol in its

bath every morning to keep it from taking cold. The moment the bird

finished taking its bath, Miss Laura took the dish from the cage, for

the alcohol made the water poisonous. Then vermin came on it, and she

had to write to Carl to ask him what to do. He told her to hang a muslin

bag full of sulphur over the swing, so that the bird would dust it down

on her feathers. That cured the little thing, and when Carl came home,

he found it quite well again. One day, just after he got back, Mrs.

Montague drove up to the house with a canary cage carefully done up in a

shawl. She said that a bad-tempered housemaid, in cleaning the cage that

morning, had gotten angry with the bird and struck it, breaking its leg.

She was very much annoyed with the girl for her cruelty, and had

dismissed her, and now she wanted Carl to take her bird and nurse it, as

she knew nothing about canaries.

 

Carl had just come in from school. He threw down his books, took the

shawl from the cage and looked in. The poor little canary was sitting in

a corner. It eyes were half shut, one leg hung loose, and it was making

faint chirps of distress.

 

Carl was very much interested in it. He got Mrs. Montague to help him,

and together they split matches, tore up strips of muslin, and bandaged

the broken leg. He put the little bird back in the cage, and it seemed

more comfortable "I think he will do now," he said to Mrs. Montague,

"but hadn't you better leave him with me for a few days?"

 

She gladly agreed to this and went away, after telling him that the

bird's name was Dick.

 

The next morning at the breakfast table, I heard Carl telling his mother

that as soon as he woke up he sprang out of bed and went to see how his

canary was. During the night, poor foolish Dick had picked off the

splints from his leg, and now it was as bad as ever. "I shall have to

perform a surgical operation," he said.

 

I did not know what he meant, so I watched him when, after breakfast, he

brought the bird down to his mother's room. She held it while he took a

pair of sharp scissors, and cut its leg right off a little way above the

broken place. Then he put some vaseline on the tiny stump, bound it up,

and left Dick in his mother's care. All the morning, as she sat sewing,

she watched him to see that he did not pick the bandage away.

 

When Carl came home, Dick was so much better that he had managed to fly

up on his perch, and was eating seeds quite gayly. "Poor Dick!" said

Carl, "leg and a stump!" Dick imitated him in a few little chirps, "A

leg and a stump!"

 

"Why, he is saying it too," exclaimed Carl, and burst out laughing.

 

Dick seemed cheerful enough, but it was very pitiful to see him dragging

his poor little stump around the cage, and resting it against the perch

to keep him from falling. When Mrs. Montague came the next day, she

could not bear to look at him. "Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, "I cannot take

that disfigured bird home."

 

I could not help thinking how different she was from Miss Laura, who

loved any creature all the more for having some blemish about it. "What

shall I do?" said Mrs. Montague. "I miss my little bird so much. I shall

have to get a new one. Carl, will you sell me one?"

 

"I will _give_ you one, Mrs. Montague," said the boy, eagerly. "I would

like to do so."

 

Mrs. Morris looked pleased to hear Carl say this. She used to fear

sometimes, that in his love for making money, he would become selfish.

 

Mrs. Montague was very kind to the Morris family, and Carl seemed quite

pleased to do her a favor. He took her up to his room, and let her

choose the bird she liked best. She took a handsome, yellow one, called

Barry. He was a good singer, and a great favorite of Carl's. The boy put

him in the cage, wrapped it up well, for it was a cold, snowy day, and

carried it out to Mrs. Montague's sleigh.

 

She gave him a pleasant smile, and drove away, and Carl ran up the steps

into the house. "It's all right, mother," he said, giving Mrs. Morris a

hearty, boyish kiss, as she stood waiting for him. "I don't mind letting

her have it."

 

"But you expected to sell that one, didn't you?" she asked.

 

"Mrs. Smith said maybe she'd take it when she came home from Boston, but

I dare say she'd change her mind and get one there."

 

"How much were you going to ask for him?"

 

"Well, I wouldn't sell Barry for less than ten dollars, or rather, I

wouldn't have sold him," and he ran out to the stable.

 

Mrs. Morris sat on the hall chair, patting me as I rubbed against her,

in rather an absentminded way. Then she got up and went into her

husband's study, and told him what Carl had done.

 

Mr. Morris seemed very pleased to hear about it, but when his wife asked

him to do something to make up the loss to the boy, he said: "I had

rather not do that. To encourage a child to do a kind action, and then

to reward him for it, is not always a sound principle to go upon."

 

But Carl did not go without his reward. That evening, Mrs. Montague's

coachman brought a note to the house addressed to Mr. Carl Morris. He

read it aloud to the family.

 

MY DEAR CARL: I am charmed with my little bird, and he has whispered to

me one of the secrets of your room. You want fifteen dollars very much

to buy something for it. I am sure you won't be offended with an old

friend for supplying you the means to get this something.

 

ADA MONTAGUE.

 

"Just the thing for my stationary tank for the goldfish," exclaimed

Carl. "I've wanted it for a long time;--it isn't good to keep them in

globes; but how in the world did she find out? I've never told any one."

 

Mrs. Morris smiled, and said, "Barry must have told her," as she took

the money from Carl to put away for him.

 

Mrs. Montague got to be very fond of her new pet. She took care of him

herself, and I have heard her tell Mrs. Morris most wonderful stories

about him--stories so wonderful that I should say they were not true if

I did not how intelligent dumb creatures get to be under kind treatment.

 

She only kept him in his cage at night, and when she began looking for

him at bedtime to put him there, he always hid himself. She would search

a short time, and then sit down, and he always came out of his

hiding-place, chirping in a saucy way to make her look at him.

 

She said that he seemed to take delight in teasing her. Once when he was

in the drawing-room with her, she was called away to speak to some one

at the telephone. When she came back, she found that one of the servants

had come into the room and left the door open leading to a veranda.

 

The trees outside were full of yellow birds, and she was in despair,

thinking that Barry had flown out with them. She looked out, but could

not see him. Then, lest he had not left the room, she got a chair and

carried it about, standing on it to examine the walls, and see if Barry

was hidden among the pictures and bric-a-brac. But no Barry was there.

She at last sank down, exhausted, on a sofa. She heard a wicked, little

peep, and looking up, saw Barry sitting on one of the rounds of the

chair that she had been carrying about to look for him. He had been

there all the time. She was so glad to see him, that she never thought

of scolding him.

 

He was never allowed to fly about the dining room during meals, and the

table maid drove him out before she set the table. It always annoyed

him, and he perched on the staircase, watching the door through the

railings. If it was left open for an instant, he flew in. One evening,

before tea, he did this. There was a chocolate cake on the sideboard,

and he liked the look of it so much that he began to peck at it. Mrs.

Montague happened to come in, and drove him back to the hall.

 

While she was having tea that evening, with her husband and little boy,

Barry flew into the room again. Mrs. Montague told Charlie to send him

out, but her husband said, "Wait, he is looking for something."

 

He was on the sideboard, peering into every dish, and trying to look

under the covers. "He is after the chocolate cake," exclaimed Mrs

Montague. "Here, Charlie, put this on the staircase for him."

 

She cut off a little scrap, and when Charlie took it to the hall, Barry

flew after him, and ate it up.

 

As for poor, little, lame Dick, Carl never sold him, and he became a

family pet. His cage hung in the parlor, and from morning till night his

cheerful voice was heard, chirping and singing as if he had not a

trouble in the world. They took great care of him. He was never allowed

to be too hot or too cold. Everybody gave him a cheerful word in passing

his cage, and if his singing was too loud, they gave him a little mirror

to look at himself in. He loved this mirror, and often stood before it

for an hour at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

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