CHAPTER

    I. The orchard
   II.  Dickey Downy’s meditations
  III.  The ruler with the iron hand
   IV.  DICKEY’S cousins
    V.  “Don’t, Johnny”
   VI.  The parrot at A party
  VII.  A winter in the south
 VIII.  The prison
   IX.  The hunters
    X. A new home
   XI.  The ill-mannered child
  XII.  Two slaves of fashion
 XIII.  DICKEY’S visit
  XIV.  The country school
   XV.  Polly’s farewell

List of Illustrations

The Indigo Bird

The Summer Tanager

The Baltimore Oriole

The Bobolink

  Last night Alicia wore a Tuscan Sonnet
  And many humming birds were fastened on it. 
  Caught in a net of delicate creamy crepe
  The dainty captives lay there dead together;
  No dart of slender bill, no fragile shape
  Fluttering, no stir of radiant feather;
  Alicia looked so calm, I wondered whether
  She cared if birds were killed to trim her bonnet. 
  Her hand fell lightly on my hand;
  And I fancied that a stain of death
  Like that which doomed the Lady of Macbeth
  Was on her hand.

      —­Elizabeth Cavazza

CHAPTER I

THE ORCHARD

  Bobolink, that in the meadow
  Or beneath the orchard’s shadow
  Keepest up a constant rattle,
  Joyous as my children’s prattle,
  Welcome to the North again.
          —­Thos.  Hill.

My native home was in a pleasant meadow not far from a deep wood, at some distance from the highway.  From this it was separated by plowed fields and a winding country lane, carpeted with grass and fringed with daisies.

While it was yet dawn, long before the glint of the sun found its way through the foliage, the air was musical with the twittering of our feathered colony.

It is true our noisy neighbors, the blue-jays, sometimes disturbed my mother by their hoarse chattering when she was weary of wing and wanted a quiet hour to meditate, but they disturbed us younger ones very little.  My mother did not think they were ever still a minute.  Constantly hopping back and forth, first on one bough, then on another, flirting down between times to pick up a cricket or a bug, they were indeed, a most fidgetty set.  Their restlessness extended even to their handsome top-knots, which they jerked up and down like a questioning eyebrow.  They were beautiful to look at had they only possessed a little of the dignity and composure of our family.  But as I said, we little ones did not trouble ourselves about them.

The air was so pleasant, our nest so cozy, and our parents provided us such a plentiful diet of nice worms and bugs, that like other thoughtless babies who have nothing to do but eat, sleep, and grow, we had no interest in things outside and did not dream there was such a thing as vexation or sorrow or crime in this beautiful world.  When our parents were off gathering our food, we seldom felt lonely, for we nestled snugly and kept each other company by telling what we would do when we should be strong enough to fly.