My new owner was a soft-voiced, gentle child, from whom I soon found I had nothing to fear.  She was most careful to keep my cage in order and never neglected to feed me.  Unlike her little friend Betty, she never allowed her sports or pleasures to interfere with this duty.  Often her playmates came for a romp in the garden behind the store, but she did not join them till she had first attended to my wants.  I was fond of having her talk to me, for her voice was sweet and kind, and the little terms of endearment she often used were very pleasing and made me feel she was my true friend.  She once tried to pet me by stroking my feathers, but I did not like it.  Although I knew she did not mean to hurt me, the motion of her hand made me nervous.  Instead of persisting, she only said reproachfully, as she put me back on my perch: 

“Dear Dickey Downy, why are you afraid of me?  Your own little Polly wouldn’t hurt you for the world.  I wanted to softly stroke your pretty plumage just out of pure love and, you dear little coward, you won’t let me.”

In her affection for me, Polly did not forget the wild birds outside, which flew about in the big evergreen trees near the garden gate.  She showed her thoughtfulness for the little creatures by strewing bread crumbs for them on the window sills on snowy days.  She often gathered up the tablecloth after the housemaid had removed the breakfast dishes and, running out under the trees, would shake it vigorously that her wild pets might get all the little pieces of food that fell.  Not a bird came down as long as she remained in the yard, but as soon as she had tripped back to the house and the door closed upon her brown curls, I could see a drove of hungry snowbirds swoop from the trees, and in a minute every crumb would be picked up.  I am sure they must have loved dear little Polly, for many a choice bit did they get through her kindness.

While the majority of the customers at the store were well-dressed women, there were many who came to buy hats who looked poor and pinched.  A few looked slatternly.

A sudden swing of their dress skirts would disclose a badly frayed petticoat or a tattered stocking showing above the shabby shoe.  Their gloveless hands were red and cold and coarse, and the milliner told the clerk that she dreaded to have them handle her filmy laces or glistening satins, because their rough fingers stuck to the delicate fabrics and injured them.

These poor women worked hard, early and late.  Beyond the barest necessities they had little to spare, and yet not a woman among them would have bought an unfashionable or out-of-date hat could she have had it at one quarter the price.  Feathers were fashionable, and feathers she must have.  Might not one “as well be out of the world as out of the fashion”?