I could not have understood all he said; but I am afraid I did not try to understand what I might have done; however, I said no more, and stood silent, while he comforted me with the promise of a new flower for my garden, called “hen and chickens,” which he said I was to take care of instead of the little blackbirds.

When he was gone I went back to the holly-bush, and stood gazing at the nest, and nursing angry thoughts in my heart.  “What a preach,” I thought, “about nothing! as if there could be any conceit and presumption in taking care of three poor little birds!  The curate must forget that I was growing into a big girl; and as to not knowing how to feed them, I knew as well as he did that birds lived upon worms, and liked bread-crumbs.”  And so thinking wrong ended (as it almost always does) in doing wrong:  and I took the three little blackbirds out of the nest, popped them into my pocket-handkerchief, and ran home.  And I took some trouble to keep them out of everyone’s sight—­even out of my mother’s; for I did not want to hear any more “grown-up” opinions on the matter.

I filled a basket with cotton wool, and put the birds inside, and took them into a little room downstairs, where they would be warm.  Before I went to bed I put two or three worms, and a large supply of soaked bread-crumbs, in the nest, close to their little beaks.  “What can they want more?” thought I in my folly; but conscience is apt to be restless when one is young, and I could not feel quite comfortable in bed, though I got to sleep at last, trying to fancy myself Goody Twoshoes, with three sleek full-fledged blackbirds on my shoulders.

In the morning, as soon as I could slip away, I went to my pets.  Any one may guess what I found; but I believe no one can understand the shock of agony and remorse that I felt.  There lay the worms that I had dug up with reckless cruelty; there was the wasted bread; and there, above all, lay the three little blackbirds, cold and dead!

I do not know how long I stood looking at the victims of my presumptuous wilfulness; but at last I heard a footstep in the passage, and fearing to be caught, I tore out of the house, and down to my old seat near the holly-bush, where I flung myself on the ground, and “wept bitterly.”  At last I heard the well-known sound of some one climbing over the wall; and then the curate stood before me, with the plant of “hen and chickens” in his hands.  I jumped up, and shrank away from him.

“Don’t come near me,” I cried; “the blackbirds are dead;” and I threw myself down again.

I knew from experience that few things roused the anger of my friend so strongly as to see or hear of animals being ill-treated.  I had never forgotten, one day when I was out with him, his wrath over a boy who was cruelly beating a donkey; and now I felt, though I could not see, the expression of his face, as he looked at the holly-bush and at me, and exclaimed, “You took them!” And then added, in the low tone in which he always spoke when angry, “And the mother-bird has been wandering all night round this tree, seeking her little ones in vain, not to be comforted, because they are not!  Child, child! has GOD the Father given life to His creatures for you to destroy it in this reckless manner?”