Golden Dicky, The Story of a Canary and His Friends

“You have Chummy.”

“A street sparrow—he is good as far as he goes, but he only opens up one side of my nature. I am a highly cultured bird, whose family has been civilized for three hundred and fifty years.”

“I didn’t know your family was as old as that,” said Billie.

“Indeed it is—we are descended from the wild birds of the Canary Islands and Madeira, but canaries are like Jews, they have spread all over the world and have become parts of many nations. I am not boasting, Billie. I am merely stating a fact.”

“Well,” said Billie, going back to what I had first said, “I never dreamed you were lonely. Why don’t you sing a little song about it to our Mary, or her mother, and they will get you another bird from downtown to play with.”

“I want Daisy, and didn’t I sit for an hour this morning with my throat puffed out, singing about her to our good Missie as she sat sewing?”

“And what did she say?”

“Yes, Dicky-Dick—I know all about your little lonely cage, and the spring coming, and how you would like to have a playmate; and if you’ll wait till I get my next month’s allowance I’ll try to buy Daisy for you, for I think she’s neglected in that lodging house.”

“Then what are you squealing about now?” asked Billie.

“Nothing—I just want you to know that birds have troubles and things to put up with, as well as dogs.”

“Everybody has troubles,” said Billie. “There’s something the matter with good Mr. Martin. He sighs when his wife is not in the room, and his eyes are troubled—Dicky-Dick, I’m going to sleep again.”

“Oh, no, Billie,” I said; “keep awake and talk to me. Wouldn’t you like to hear a story about a canary that belonged to a friend of our Mary? It could talk and said quite well, ‘Baby! Baby!’”

Billie became wide awake. “Nonsense!” she said sharply. “Canaries can’t talk.”

“Billie dear,” I said gently, for I was afraid of rousing her temper, which is pretty quick sometimes, “you have lived in a very quiet way, and you have traveled only from New York to Toronto. How can you know everything about canaries?”

“I used to know one in the café,” said Billie sharply, “a little green fellow with a top-knot. He died after a while. The smoke from the men’s pipes killed him.”

“And did you know another one?”

“Yes, the grocer at the Four Corners had a yellow one, but he never talked. I mean real talk that human beings could understand. Of course, we animals have our own language that people don’t know at all. In fact, we can talk right before them, and they don’t know it.”

“Then you have known two canaries only in your life,” I said, “and yet you lay down rules about them. Do you know that there are Scotch Fancy canaries with flat snakelike heads and half circle bodies, and big English canaries, notably the Manchester Coppy?”

“What’s that?” asked Billie. “It sounds like a policeman.”

“Well, the Coppy is a policeman among canaries, for he has an enormous body, often eight inches long. His coloring is lovely, and his head most imposing. Coppy comes from crest, or copping, our Mary says. Then there are the Belgian canaries, all sharp angles. They are very sensitive birds, and their owners do not handle them, but touch them with little sticks when they wish them to step from one cage to another.”

“You’re of English descent, aren’t you?” asked Billie.

“Of mixed English and American blood. English people breed their birds for looks and coloring.”

Billie began to snicker.

I was going to be annoyed with her, then I thought, “What’s the use?” So I said quite pleasantly, “I know I’m not English in that way. I am more like a German canary. Germans don’t care how a bird looks if he sings well.”

“Is there a French canary?” inquired Billie.

“Oh, yes, a very pretty little bird with whorls of feathers on its breast and sides—now, Billie, I haven’t time to tell you all the other kinds of canaries. I will go back to what I was going to say. My father, who has seen hundreds of canaries, for he was a show bird before our Mary got him, says that if trainers will have patience with young birds they can teach them to say certain things. Why, right in your own United States was a canary who talked.”

“Where?” asked Billie.

“In Boston. A lady had a canary that she petted very much. He used to light on her head when she was knitting and pull her hair.”

“Why did he do that foolish thing?” asked Billie.

“He wished her to play with him. She would shake her knitting needle at him and say, ‘Fly high, Toby, fly high.’

“To her surprise, the bird one day repeated her words. ‘Fly high, Toby, fly high.’ She at once began to train other young birds, and made quite a good living at teaching short sentences to them, but it took a great deal of patience. So you see, if human beings spent more time in teaching us, we’d be more clever.”

Billie looked dreadfully. “Don’t speak about training birds and animals too much, Dicky-Dick. It makes me shudder. If you knew what horrible things are done to animals who appear in public.”

“I do know,” I said. “I’ve heard shocking tales from Chummy, told him by downtown pigeons.”

“Once,” said Billie, “I met a strange dog looking for food on the dumps. You never saw such a scarecrow, and he was frightened of his own shadow. He told me he had run away from The Talented Terrier Traveling Troupe. He said his life had been simply awful. A big man used to stand over him with a whip, and make him mount ladders and hang by his paws and do idiotic things that no self-respecting dog should be required to do.”

“Billie,” I said, “I do know about these things, and the whole subject is so affecting to me that I often have nightmare over it. I dare not tell you the horrible things they sometimes do to the little performing birds you see on the stage. Starvation is one of the least dreadful ways of making them do their tricks.”

“Why do human beings who are often so sensible allow this wickedness?” asked Billie wistfully.

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I said. “It breaks my heart to think of little gentle birds and nice dogs and cats and monkeys and other creatures being hurried from city to city in little stuffy traveling boxes, and whipped on to a stage, and made to bow and act silly to please great theaters full of people who applaud and praise, and don’t know what they’re doing. If they did know, if the great big kind-hearted public knew what those smooth-looking men in the long-tailed coats do to their animals behind the scenes, they would get up in a body and walk out whenever an animal act is put on the stage.”

“That’s the best way to put these fellows out of business,” said Billie warmly. “Let no one patronize their shows. Then they would have to earn their living in some honest way—but there is Chummy at the window. I wonder what’s happened.”

We both looked at the little fellow as he stood by the open window.

“News! News!” said Chummy, flapping his little dusky wings. “New arrivals in the neighborhood—a boy and a girl and their parents in the yellow boarding-house.”

“Some canaries are afraid of strange children,” I said, “because they come so close and poke their fingers at them, but I can always get away from them.”

“I like children,” said Chummy, “for if they have food, they nearly always throw some to me.”

“There are very few children in this neighborhood,” I said.

“Yes, because there are so few private houses. Come on out and see them, Dicky.”

“If you will excuse me,” I said to Billie. “I will talk to you some other time on this subject of performing animals.”

Billie grumbled something between her teeth. Now that I was called away, she wanted me to stay.

“You come out, too, dear Billie,” I said. “If you do not, I will stay with you.”

Billie got up and sauntered out of the room and downstairs to the sidewalk where she sat down in the sun, on a black snow-bank, which had become that color in the long thaw we were having.

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.”

CHAPTER XVI

STORIES ABOUT THE OLD BARN

TO-DAY, after lunch, Mrs. Martin gave Billie a walk round the square, then she brought her in the house and said, “I am going to a knitting party where dogs would not be welcomed. I will come home at five and give you another walk.”

Billie wagged her tail in her funny, slow way and gave Mrs. Martin one of her sweetly affectionate glances, as if to say, “It’s all right. I know if it were your party you’d let me go.”

Mrs. Martin pulled an armchair to the window and put a cushion on it. “Jump up there, Billie,” she said, “and amuse yourself by looking outside.” Then giving her a pat, and throwing me a kiss, for she knows pets are apt to be jealous of each other, she went away.

I flew to the arm of Billie’s chair and sat dressing my feathers in the sunshine.

Presently Billie said discontentedly, “There’s nothing to see out of this window but yards and that old barn.”

“That old barn is full of stories,” I said, “and very interesting.”

“What makes it interesting?”

“In the first place, many birds nest there, and in the second, many animals have been housed in it.”

“I never see anything going on in it,” she said.

I smiled. “You are not a keen observer, Billie, except along dog lines. Look out now and you will see Susan going in with a little soft hay in her bill for the bottom of her nest.”

“Who is Susan?” asked Billie.

“Don’t you remember that Chummy told you about Susan, mate to Slow-Boy, both street pigeons? They are taking care of two eggs. He sits all day, and she sits all night.”

“I know male pigeons help their mates,” said Billie. “I used to see them doing that in New York.”

“He will come off at five and have his evening to himself. If Susan isn’t on time, just to the dot, he calls loudly, and gives her a great pecking. She is very patient with him usually, but the other day I saw her turn on him and give him a great blow with her wing. Pigeons fight that way, you know.”

“I’ve seen them,” said Billie. “They scrape and bow to each other, then step up and give a good whack.”

“Would you like to hear a story about a fire in the barn?” I asked.

“If you please. I feel very dull this afternoon, and would like something to amuse me. I think I ate too much tripe for my lunch. When our Mary’s back was turned I stole a nice little lump from the dish.”

“What a pity it is you are such a greedy dog, Billie!” I said.

“Yes, it is a pity,” she replied, with hanging head, “but believe me, Dicky, I can’t help it. I had to steal so much in my early life that I can’t keep from it now—please go on with your story.”

“Well, Susan and Slow-Boy are of course mated for life, for pigeons rarely change partners. They are very happy together, and only quarrel enough to keep things from getting stupid. You know, don’t you, that pigeons lay all the year round, if they can get food?”

“Oh, yes, Dicky, I know that. I should think they would get tired of raising families, but the Bronx pigeons only hold up in moulting time.”

“Now this Red-Boy I am going to tell you about,” I went on, “was one of their July pigeons of two years ago. Chummy told me the story, for of course I wasn’t here then. He says Red-Boy was a nice enough bird, but he took for a mate a very flighty half-breed fantail, called Tiptoe, from her mincing walk. You probably know, Billie, that when thoroughbred pigeons get mixed with street pigeons they lose all their fancy lines, and go right back to common ancestor blue rock dove traits.”

“Yes, I know,” said Billie; “but if they keep any fancy ways, or feathers, they are very proud of them.”

“Exactly,” I said, “so you can imagine how Tiptoe diddled about, putting on airs, before poor Susan, who is very plain-looking and has lost every trace of blue blood, except the half homer stripes on her solid old back. Now, when the time came for Red-Boy and Tiptoe to make a nest, Red-Boy wanted to build near his father and mother.

“Slow-Boy fought him and tried to get rid of him. He is a model father when his squabs come and when they turn to squeakers, but when they are grown up he naturally supposes that they will go out into the world and let him be free to bring up other young ones.”

“I suppose his mother had spoiled him,” said Billie. “Hen pigeons are often weak in the head.”

“Yes, Chummy says of all Susan’s young, Red-Boy was the favorite. She stood by him, and finally old Slow-Boy gave in, and Red-Boy and Tiptoe chose a ledge right above the parents’ nest. They even stole straws, when Slow-Boy wasn’t looking, and Chummy says he heard that Susan was foolish enough to give them some of the choicest ones she brought in. It wasn’t a tidy nest when it was finished—not a bit like the careful one the old birds made, with nice fine bits of straw arranged inside for little squab feet to cling to.”