Chapter IV: Little Stupid

“All this time I had felt no fears for the pretty blue eggs in our nest under the eaves, and with Mrs. Robin I was very happy watching them until the shells cracked open and four little birds appeared. They were our first, and we were so proud and fond of them, and nursed them with so much care, until one beautiful summer morning when we thought them old enough to begin to learn to fly. I shall never forget that day, and it all comes back to me now so vividly, the bright sunshine, the shadows on the grass, the ripe cherries on the trees, and our little ones hopping about on the walks, and then flying a few feet. I had taken the precaution to see that Jim was asleep in his chair, and so had no fear of him. Three of our children were sitting on the branch of a tree; but the fourth, who had never seemed quite as bright as the others, and whom we called Stupid, was in the grass pecking away at a cherry, while I was hunting about for more, when suddenly Mrs. Robin gave a terrible scream, and darted past me so swiftly that I felt kind of dizzy like and frightened, and flew up into a honeysuckle, where I was out of danger, and could look around and see what Mrs. Robin was so excited about. I never thought of Stupid, and my blood curdled in my veins, and I went a little higher up in the honeysuckle, when I saw that Jim had him in his mouth, and was bounding through the grounds with Mrs. Robin in hot pursuit, uttering such dreadful cries that out came my mistress with her parasol, and the cook with the broom, and the housemaid with the duster, and all took after Jim, on whose back Mrs. Robin finally pounced, pecking him so with her beak that he dropped his victim and turned to defend himself. But it was too late; poor little Stupid was dead, and that night there were only three little birds in our nest, and Mrs. Robin never spoke to me but once, and that was to call me a coward for hiding in the honeysuckle, instead of fighting as she did. If there was anything she despised, it was a _sneak_, she said, and for a whole week she was very cool and distant toward me, and would not believe me at all when I told her how sorry I was for my apparent want of courage, and that I stood back to look after our other young ones, and see that no harm came to them, while she, and my mistress, and the cook and the housemaid did battle with Jim.

“‘That was our first quarrel and our first sorrow, and I may say our last, for before we had any more eggs in our nest the horrid Jim was dead. Just what ailed him I never knew, but Mrs. Robin said he had been fed too high, and possibly she was right. At any rate he grew very thin, and sick, and weak, and we watched him anxiously, feeling glad to see him suffer when we remembered Stupid, but sorry for our mistress, who nursed him so carefully, and cried that morning when they found him dead on the grass, with the rain falling heavily upon him. They buried him under the plum-tree, by the side of Fanny; and there’s not even a kitten about the house now, for they made such work with the lace curtains, jumping at each other through them, and scratched up the flower-beds so, that my mistress grew tired of them, and there’s nothing in that garden to trouble us birds. But our nest is not now up under the eaves, for they have torn the house down over our heads two or three times, and our home is in a big horse-chestnut, where the leaves are so thick that not a boy in the neighborhood has ever suspected where we live.’

“Here the robin stopped to rest, for he had talked so fast, and used so many large words, that he was quite out of breath; and as by that time the people began to come out on the piazza for the fresh morning air, he flew away to a live-oak-tree, and began to sing merrily.”

Here the Red-bird paused, and from my seat beneath the magnolia I looked at the Paroquet just in time to detect him trying to hide a yawn, as if he were slightly tired with Robin, and Stupid, and Jim, and cats generally. But perhaps I was mistaken, for after a moment he asked:

“Where is Mrs. Robin now? Do you know if she is dead or alive?”

“Dead,” answered the Red-bird. “Robin told me that she was with him two winters ago, near Tallahassee, and that they built a nest there—almost the first in Florida, for as a general thing robins do not nest here; but they did, and were very happy, too, until poor Mrs. Robin was killed—shot by one of the soldiers who used to be so thick in those parts.”

“It’s the same fellow I know,” returned the Paroquet, “a great gossip; but go on—you certainly have more to tell.”

“Oh, yes, a great deal more,” said Mrs. Red; “but my story takes me now to the North, for my mistress left Florida a few days after my long talk with Robin; and after a three days’ voyage by sea, during which I was so sick that I hoped I should die, we reached a place they called New York, and there I changed owners. It seems my mistress lived very far to the West, and as she had found it some trouble to travel with me, she gave me to a friend of hers whom she met at the hotel, and who took even better care of me than she had done, for sometimes she had forgotten to give me any water for an entire day, and had otherwise neglected me. But my new mistress was very kind, and petted me a great deal, and called me some of the names Robin had said his mistress gave to her cat Jim. I missed Robin, and wondered if I should ever see him again. It was not likely, I thought, for of course his home and mine must be miles apart.

“We were going home very soon, I heard my mistress say, and one morning we left the noisy city, and when we stopped it was so late and so dark that I could not see where we were, or what the house was like. It was very quiet and still, and I was so tired and worn with the journey that I slept soundly until morning, and was only awakened by the housemaid when she came to open the shutters. It was a funny kind of a house, unlike anything I had ever seen before, which was not strange, perhaps, inasmuch as I had only been in big hotels. Still I think it was different from most houses, for the rooms all opened into each other, with no doors to shut, if one had wished to shut them; and there were queer nooks and corners, everywhere, and pleasant places to sit, and read the books upon the shelves. I really began to feel quite literary and learned myself, there were so many books, and pictures, and curious things from foreign parts, the names of which I did not then know, but I learned these afterward from hearing the people, who came to see my mistress, talk about them. There were Madonnas, and saints, and angels from Florence, and Rome, and Dresden, and dancing girls from Pompeii, and Apollos, and Venuses, and vases, and shells, and tables, and more things than I can remember now. I think my mistress wrote books, for there used often to be ink spots on her fingers, and a very tired look on her face when she came from a room upstairs which they called the library, and where she spent most of her mornings.

“It must have been April when I went to my new home, and one morning I saw what a snow-storm was for the first time in my life. My cage was hung in such a pretty little nook off from a bay window where a great many flowers were kept, and there were windows on three sides, so that I could look out into the yard, and see the big snowflakes sifting down through the trees, until the ground was completely covered with a soft carpet of white, and the little birds which had been flitting about for several days, hid themselves in the evergreens, and I heard my mistress say she must throw them some crumbs if the weather continued so cold. And that made me think of Mr. Robin, and what he had told me of his mistress feeding the birds. Where was he, I wondered, and where was his home, and I wished so much that I might see him again, if only to ask if there was any news from the South, where I left all that made life pleasant to me. I was always thinking of the old home among the jasmines, and it was especially kept in my mind by a stuffed bird which hung on a shelf in one corner of the nook where my cage was hung. My mistress brought it and put it there one morning, and said to me very friendly-like: ‘There, little Reddy, that will remind you of home, and who knows but poor Greenie came from the same place with yourself?’ It was a Paroquet, with such lovely green and golden feathers.”

“With a brownish tinge on the breast?” Mr. Paroquet asked, somewhat anxiously, and Mrs. Red replied:

“Yes, I noticed that particularly—the mottled appearance of the breast, where there was a spot of bright yellow.”

“My first wife, I’ll wager my head!” exclaimed Mr. Paroquet, very much awake now, and excited, it seemed to me, for he flew from the magnolia, where he had been sitting in a sleepy kind of way, to the orange-tree, where he alighted close to Mrs. Red, and continued: “My wife, from your description; the one they carried away and stuffed, so Robin said. Do you think she _was_ stuffed—think she was really dead, or will she be coming back some day when I don’t expect her?”

“Dead? Of course she was dead,” returned Mrs. Red, rather scornfully. “She never spoke nor moved, all the time I was there, but just stared at me with those dreadful glass eyes, which made me feel so uncomfortable. You need have no fears of her coming back.”

“Oh, well,” returned Mr. Paroquet, brightening up a little. “Not that I shouldn’t be very glad to see her; very glad, of course, but then, you see, there’s the present Mrs. Paroquet, who might not be so glad, and that would make it rather awkward. Nobody can be dead a year, and come back, without being a very little in the way, for they are sure to find their places filled, or at least bridged over.”

To me, who, you will remember, was sitting on a bench listening to the conversation of these birds, the Paroquet’s assertion was startling, and for a few moments I forgot what the birds were saying, while I asked myself:

“Is it true that if I were to die, and go away into the darkness and silence of the grave, and then after a year could come back to the friends who had wept so bitterly when I left them, is it true that I should find myself in the way—my place filled, or bridged over with new loves and interests, which my sudden return would disturb and mar?”

And then I thought of a little blue-eyed, golden-haired girl, whom we called Nellie, and whose grave had been on the hill-side more than a dozen years. If she could come back again, would she not find a warm welcome from the mother who never mentions her without the hot tears springing to her eyes! Would Nellie be in the way? Oh, no, not the _little_ Nellie who died that winter day so many years ago, the child Nellie, whose chair is in the corner yet, and whose picture looks down upon us from the wall. _She_ could never be in the way, though the _woman_, the Nellie of twenty years, might be strange at first to the mother twelve years older now, with fuller and larger experiences of life, and habits of making plans with Nellie left out of them; but there could be no real jarring of new loves and interests; there could only be a deep joy and thankfulness for the Nellie alive again. So I reasoned—so I decided, and then turned back to the birds, who were still at their talk, and had passed from the snow-storm of April to the month of May, when Mrs. Red’s cage was first hung in a mountain ash which grew in the garden of her new home.