Chapter III: Robin’s Home

“One morning when he came to see me as usual, complaining of the heat, and saying he should soon be starting for home if the weather continued like this, he found me very sad and anxious, for only the night before I had heard my mistress say that she intended taking me North with her, and should, perhaps, give me to a friend who had asked her to bring her a bird from the South. This was a deathblow to all my hopes, for as day after day I had watched the piles of baggage and the crowds of people which left the hotel, and heard the waiters say they were starting for home, I thought to myself the day will come when my mistress will go, too, and then she will surely set me free, and I fancied the surprise and joy of Mr. Red and the little ones, when I flew down upon them some evening.”

“About how long was this after your capture?” asked the Paroquet, and Mrs. Red replied:

“Three, or four, or five weeks. I don’t quite remember.”

“Ah!” and Mr. Paroquet nodded very knowingly. “I reckon he might have been surprised to see you, and glad, of course, very glad, and Miss Spotted-Wing, too, for she was at the jasmine nest every day by that time, helping take care of the children, and must have been pretty well tired out.”

“Yes,” and Mrs. Red spoke sorry-like, as she always did when Spotted-Wing was mentioned, but if she understood the Paroquet’s meaning she gave no sign, and went on with her story.

“All my hopes were blasted now, for if my mistress took me away with her that was the end to my dream of freedom, and I was feeling so wretched and heart-sick when Robin came, as usual, and to him I told my trouble, asking what the North was like, and if, as I had heard, it snowed there all the time, though what snow was I did not then know, any more than you knew what icicles were when you asked if they grew on Christmas trees.

“‘Snow all the time!’ and Robin laughed so loudly that I was afraid he would awaken the lady on whose window-sill he was sitting. ‘That is one of your mistaken ideas of the North. Snow all the time! No, nor half the time, though we do have some pretty heavy north-easters when the wind blows enough to shake your feathers off; but that is in the winter, when such as you are in the warm house, hanging by the windows, where you can look out and see the snow drifting down through the trees, as the leaves of the dogwood and Cherokee roses fall in high wind. But it is the summer that is just glorious up there! Do you see that patch of green?’ and he nodded toward a yard not far away, which I had before noticed, and thought very fine.

“‘Well, the people who live there have sowed some kind of grain to make believe it was grass, but, dear me, it is no more like the turf at the North than your sand is like our clay. I wish you could see our beautiful lawns and meadows; they are just like a piece of green velvet. There is grass everywhere, and such flowers as we have in the summer time; such roses! No Cherokees, to be sure, but all the other kinds, with names I cannot begin to pronounce. And there is some smell to the lilacs, and honeysuckles, and the June pinks, and the English violets, and I can’t begin to tell you what else, except that the beds and borders are one blaze of beauty and brightness from early June till the frost comes in the fall.’

“‘Do you have magnolias there?’ I asked, and he answered slowly, ‘Well, now, Miss Red, we don’t have magnolias, nor orange blossoms, nor jasmines, and such like, but we have pond lilies, which to my mind beat everything else in the world. I wish you could see my home, or rather the garden where I was born, and have lived all my life. It is so lovely, with its grass and evergreens, and mountain ash and horse-chestnuts, and so many crooked little paths winding here and there, and arbors covered with woodbine, and grape-vines, and roses, and in the summer so many baskets and tall white things filled with flowers; and, oh my, if you could just see the cherry-trees! It makes my mouth water now to think of the luscious fruit of which we robins can have all we want. There is one tree which my mistress says belongs to the boys and birds, and such squabbles as we have over it. I don’t much like the boys, for they will leave cherries any time to break up a bird’s nest, and I’ve seen some sad sights in my time; though in the garden everything was peaceful and quiet, for my mistress takes care of the birds, and sometimes in spring, when the snow comes late, and we cannot find any worms, she gives us bread crumbs to eat, and we are not afraid of her, though she comes very near to us. My nest was up under the eaves, and near a chamber window, where I felt so safe and secure, knowing that nothing could ever touch the pretty blue eggs which Mrs. Robin laid every spring and summer. Neither boy nor cat could reach us there.’

“‘Cat?’” I said. “‘Cat! Pray what is that? I never heard of a cat before.’

“‘Never heard of a cat?’ Mr. Robin repeated, and now he laughed so loudly that the lady in the room upon whose window-sill he was sitting turned the shutter, and looked out to see what all the chattering was about.

“‘Seems to me the birds make a great noise this morning. They have been at it more than an hour,’ I heard her say, and then she went on with her dressing, while Robin continued:

“‘Never heard of a cat! Why, where were you raised, that your education was so neglected? But I forgot that you Red-birds lead a kind of Bohemian life apart from civilization, and so fail to learn a great many things which we robins, who are in society all the time, take naturally.’

“I had before observed that Mr. Robin, though given to a good deal of slang, sometimes went off into strains which I could not understand, and this was one of them, for I had not the remotest idea what he meant by civilization or Bohemian either, and I said so to him, whereupon he laughed again, and told me that the free and easy life I led up the river with Mr. Red and the little Reds, and the jasmines, and Cherokees, and alligators was Bohemian, while it was the very top of civilization and society to be shut up in a gilded cage as I was, with no chance of escape. At the risk of seeming very vulgar and ignorant in his eyes, I told him I liked Bohemian best, even if I had never heard of a cat, and then I questioned him again of that creature, was it a bird, or a beast, or what?’

‘A _beast_ most decidedly,’ he said; ‘a _vile, ugly beast_,’ and by ugly he meant bad, for he said cats looked well enough, and he had even heard his mistress call one she had ‘a darling little beauty,’ but he did not see it. They had fur instead of feathers, four legs instead of two, with a long streamer behind which was called a tail, and which was anything but handsome. Then they were the natural enemies of birds, which they caught and ate whenever a chance occurred.

“‘Eat birds! Eat my little Reds!’ I exclaimed, in horror, and he replied:

“‘Yes, quicker than wink if they could get at ’em; and they are so sly and creeping-like that they are upon you before you know it, and they keep us in a constant fret when we are teaching our young ones to fly.’

“‘Then there is something bad even at the North, which you describe as so perfect,’ I said, a little maliciously.

“‘Why, yes,’ he answered, slightly crestfallen. ‘We have cats there, but then there’s no place just exactly right, you know. There’s a _cat_ or something everywhere.’

“I knew that ‘by cat or something,’ he meant an annoyance of some kind, and I thought of the yellow jasmines up the river, and said to myself, ‘There’s no cat there;’ and then, when I remembered how Mr. Red had sometimes troubled me with his indolent habits, and his familiar way of talking to that pert Miss Spotted-Wing, I thought that might perhaps have been a cat, or at least a kitten, as Robin said the little cats were called.

“And then he told me of a kitten which came to his mistress’ door one wintry day when the snow was blowing, as he said, great guns, and the mountain ash almost bent up double before the driving wind. His mistress heard the cry, and saw the kitty looking in at the window and begging to come in; and as both she and the master were fond of cats he waded out into the snow and brought the kitty in, and gave it milk in a china saucer in the parlor, and petted it more than they did old Fanny, a highly respectable cat, who had lived with them a long time, and who did not at first take kindly to _Jim_—that was what they called the intruder—but spit at him, and boxed his ears, and growled if he came near her. But Jim was not to be repressed, and cared nothing for Fanny’s growls, or spits, or boxes, but seized every opportunity to jump at her from under chairs and tables, and to spring at her tail, until the old cat’s life was almost a burden to her. At last, however, Jim conquered, and the two were the best of friends, Fanny treating him as if he had been her own, giving him more than half the milk, and even waking him up when the dinner-bell rang, if he happened to be sleeping in the easy-chair near the fire, where he took his usual nap.

“‘After a time,’ said Robin, ‘old Fanny died, and was buried in the garden, under the plum-tree, and then Jim was really the master of the house, for I never knew a cat petted as my mistress petted him. And for a cat he was very handsome. He did not grow tall and long, as cats usually do, but was short, and fat, and round as a ball, with fur which shone like satin, and a white spot under his chin. I did not wonder my mistress liked him, he was so playful and affectionate; but it used to make me sick sometimes when she actually kissed him and called him a darling. But when one morning he caught a little striped snake, and carried it to her in triumph, and persisted in keeping it and tossing it in the air in spite of all her efforts to make him drop it, I noticed that she did not fondle him for a week; and I think she put him in the bath-tub, for I saw him lying in the sun, looking very wet and forlorn. But his fur was soon dried, and he raced about the grounds like a mad creature, catching grasshoppers and flies, and worrying almost to death a highly respectable toad, who lived near the cellar door, outside.’