THE PET SWALLOW.

One day we had been out gathering primroses, and, to put the pretty pale flowers neatly into baskets, we had sat down under one of the windows in the old church tower.  Mary was sitting next the wall, when something touched her shoulder, and fell on her knee.  It was a young swallow, without any feathers, that had fallen, or perhaps had been thrown, out of the nest, by some quarrelsome brother or sister.

The poor primroses were cast away, and every little hand was ready to seize the prize.  When we found it was not killed, or even hurt, by its fall, some called for a cage; others said, “Let us put it back in the nest; we do not know what to give it to eat; we may be sure it will die.”  And this seemed so very true that we were all obliged to agree; but, alas! the poor swallow having built in a false window of the tower, there was no way of getting to the nest, and so the cage was brought, and the little bird did not die, but grew bigger and prettier every day, until at last it could skim through the room on its pretty, soft wings, and would dive down to us, and light upon our shoulders, or let itself fall into our hands.  How we did love that little bird! and oh, how sorry we were one day, when it flew out at the window!  We all ran down to the lawn; we were quite sure it would never come back to us again, for it seemed so happy to be free; and we watched it flying here and there—­now high in the air, now close down to the ground.  We had called our pretty bird Fairy, and it really seemed like a fairy now; one moment it was quite out of sight, the next so near it almost touched us.  At last, Fred gave a long, loud whistle; when he began, it was up in the air, high, high above our heads, but, before the sound passed away, it was fluttering its pretty dark wings upon his face.  From this time Fairy was allowed to go free; and it would skim about before our windows all day long, coming in from time to time to pay us visits, and to sleep at nights in its old post on the top of one of our little beds in the nursery.

At last August came, and then our pretty Fairy skimmed through the air, far, far beyond the reach of Fred’s whistle, for it had set out, with all the other swallows, on its long voyage across the seas.

We had never thought of this,—­never thought that our faithful Fairy would so leave us,—­and it was many days before the hope of its coming back next year could make us feel at all happy again.

But Fairy, our own dear little Fairy, did come back, and it remembered us all, as if it had been away only for a few hours, instead of nearly eight whole months.

It was a very happy day, the day that Fairy came back, and it seemed to feel as much joy as we did; first it flew to Mary, and then to Fred, and then to one after the other, twittering its wings, and rubbing its pretty black head on our hands or faces, as we see dogs and cats do when they want to show great kindness.