“Cousin Polly will like it, though,” Betty answered her mother.  “Polly was always fond of pets, and she’ll be powerful pleased to get it as a present from her Southern kinfolks.”

“We’ll have to go to the cost of a new cage, I reckon, and I don’t feel like spending the money, neither,” mused the mother.  “Polly might like a bresspin better.  I don’t know as it will pay to send her the bird after all.”

How my heart sank at this announcement! so fearful was I that I might have to remain at the cottage; but Betty’s answer gave me new hope.

“Oh, certain it will pay!” she exclaimed eagerly.  “You know how many nice things Cousin Dunbar’s sent us off-and-on, and only last Christmas Polly sent me my string of beads.  As for giving her a bresspin for a keepsake, she can get a heap nicer one out of their own store than any we could send her, and I’m certain she’d like the bird best of all; it’s such a good chance to send it by Uncle Dan when he is going to their town and can hand it right over to Polly.”

“I reckon you’re right.  Well, it will be only the cost of the cage,” said her mother, and so the matter was settled, much to my satisfaction.

My new cage was very pretty, if anything can be said in praise of a prison, and was much lighter and pleasanter than the old, heavy, home-made structure in which I had been shut up so long.  Its rim was painted a cheerful green, and the wires were burnished like gold.  Ornamental sconces held the glass cups for my food and there were decorated hoops to swing in.  Altogether it was a very handsome house, yet I could not forget it was a prison house.

Betty busied herself in fixing it comfortably for me, and was full of kind attentions.  She begged me many times not to get frightened when the cover would be put on my cage.  The hood was necessary when I was traveling, but Uncle Dan would be sitting right near me all the time and would be very good to me.  She further assured me that I would find the motion of the cars delightful, and that all I would have to do was to sit on my perch and munch my seed and have a good time.  How jolly it would be to go whizzing past fences and over bridges and through tunnels and towns and never know it, she said.  She also charged me particularly not to be scared when I would hear an occasional horrible shriek and a rumbling like thunder, as if the day of judgment was at hand.  I must remember it was only the locomotive, and it was obliged to do those disagreeable things to make the cars go faster’n, faster’n, faster’n------

How much faster I did not have time to find out, for Uncle Dan just then called to get me.  A light cover with a hole in the top was slipped over my cage, and I started on my journey.  Of my trip, of course, I knew nothing.  Part of the way we rode in a wagon through the country to the station where we took the train, but as Uncle Dan did not remove my cover in the railway car the time spent on the journey was almost a blank to me.