Five Minutes' Stories

A CANARY TRAGEDY

WHEN I was a little girl – that is about three years ago – I am now thirteen – my own particular pets were a pair of canaries. We had lots of other pets; it would take me a very long time merely to give you the list of them even without telling you anything about them, and all their adventures and funny ways. But a good many of them had in one way or another come to grief, poor things, and as my brothers grew older and had less time to take care of them, my mother said we must really give up having so many.

So one summer, just before the holidays, there was a regular flitting – the turtle-doves we gave to a little neighbour, a very gentle boy, who we knew would be kind to them; the old crow was taken to a house more in the country than ours, where there were plenty of nice, dark, crowy-looking trees; the rabbits were already all dead, and so was the tortoise, and as one of the dormice had got loose and gone off to live with the house-mice, we sent the other to a friend who had several. There remained only the dog, whom of course we couldn't give away and my canaries, whom I got leave to keep.

These canaries had a history of their own. One, we had reared ourselves from an egg, and as it was the only baby canary that had grown up of all we had had, we did think it very remarkable. Its name was "Frise-tête," which means "curly head," because it had a funny little tuft of yellow feathers right on the top of its head, and he was the cock canary, though Frise-tête sounds more like a girl's name, doesn't it? And the little hen canary was called "Coo-coo," because when she first came to us she really did make a sort of cooing noise. Where she came from we never knew – she flew in at the open window of the schoolroom one day, having evidently got out of her cage and lost her way. She was a sweet-tempered little bird, but not at all sharp or clever. She didn't seem to mind in the least that she had got into a strange place, but was quite content and happy to take up house, or "cage," with Frise-tête. This little couple made the last of our pet canaries, and they were always counted mine. I think we had had Frise-tête two years, and Coo-coo more than a year, when there came the clearing-out of pets that I told you of. But we never knew Coo-coo's age exactly, you see.

That summer we were going in different directions. My two big sisters were to spend it with our grandmother, and one of my brothers with them. The other brother and I were to go to Germany with Mamma. We were very proud of being chosen to go with her, and we had never been to Germany before, at least not to stay any length of time there, and we were in great spirits about it. There was only one thing that troubled me, and that was about the canaries. I was so afraid Mamma would not consent to take them, and yet I could not bear the idea of leaving them behind. I was sure that the person who was to take care of the house would forget to feed them, or let the cat get to them or something, and at last I told Mamma that I really would be too unhappy if I mightn't take them. Mamma was very kind – she didn't like the idea of the pretty little couple being starved or killed any more than I did, still she warned me that I should find them a good deal of trouble on the way, and that I mustn't grumble at it, which, of course, I promised I wouldn't.

So when we set off late one hot summer evening, on our long journey, I carried carefully, a queer-looking package in one hand. It was the cage, all covered up in a sort of brown holland bag, which contained my beloved Frise-tête and Coo-coo.

They were a great worry. I often wished I had left them at home, I can assure you. We had to travel two nights, and most part of two or three days before we got quite to our journey's end, though we stopped two or three times on the way, and it was so hot that we felt very tired and uncomfortable, and it was not easy to keep good-humoured even without the birds! Very often I had to sit with the cage on my knee if the railway carriage happened to be rather low, and there was not room for it up beside the cloaks and rugs. And then I had to have water in a bottle to keep the poor things supplied, and very often it spilt all over, and so did the seed, and our fellow passengers looked very cross at me. And sometimes at the stations, the guards and railway people wouldn't let me pass without undoing all the cover and everything to see what the wonderful bundle was. Oh, we were very glad when we found ourselves at last safe at the place we were to stay at! It was a very old-fashioned little town, but it was almost like being in the country. There were such beautiful walks all about, and from the end of every street one could see the fields and trees, so you see it wasn't a bit like a town.

We had rooms in a very nice funny old hotel. Mamma said it was quite like an old-fashioned English inn, such as they used to be in the coaching days. The ceilings were low, and the staircase very wide, and the furniture so old-fashioned. We had a nice large sitting-room, and two bed-rooms out of it, and on the wide window-sill of our bedroom I established Friste-tête and Coo-coo. They were very sensible, poor things, they only fluttered and fussed about for a short time, and then settled down quite contentedly, which, I am sure, was very good behaviour after being so much covered up.

I could tell you lots of stories about our life in the old German town, but I must remember that this story is to be all about the canaries. It was beautiful sunny weather, and they spent nearly their whole time at the open window – I used only to bring them in at night. And every morning I cleaned the cage out nicely, and put fresh sand and water, and seed, and groundsel. The people at the opposite side of the street got to know me quite well by sight, and would smile and nod to me. And all was as happy as possible till one sad day which I will tell you about.

Mamma had two or three times said to me, "Take care, Sally, when you put the cage on the window-sill to see that it is quite steady. The sill is broad and even, inside, but outside the stone slopes downward," and I had always taken care.

But this morning, just as I had finished cleaning and all, I saw a piece of sugar on the table, which, it suddenly struck me would be a nice treat for the canaries. I sprang across the room hastily to get the sugar, and was just turning back with it, when a smashing, crashing noise made me start. It was – no I can hardly tell it, even now I remember the horrible feeling – it was the cage falling, fallen out of the window, down into the street below. I screamed and rushed into the furthest corner of the room, shutting my eyes and clasping my hands over my ears. It was very silly I know, but I was really almost out of my mind.

"They are dead, they are killed!" I cried screaming again so loud that Mamma rushed in from the next room to see what was the matter. She saw it in an instant without my speaking, and indeed I was by this time choking with sobs.

"Stay there, Sally," said she, and down stairs she ran. I just took my fingers out of my ears for an instant, but I heard a hubbub in the street below, and I shuddered and put them back again. It was too horrible.

In a few minutes Mamma came up, carrying something in her hand, and looking very sad.

"Sally dear, I am very sorry for you," she said, "but it might have been still sadder. Coo-coo seems very little the worse – she has had a wonderful escape. But poor Frise-tête is dead. I have brought him up – I think he must have been killed at once, and not have suffered."

It was some time before she could persuade me to look at my poor pet. It was indeed a sad sight. Even the death of a little bird is sad, I still think. His pretty yellow feathers all rumpled and torn, his bright eyes glazed and filmy.

"Oh, my dear, sweet Frise-tête," I said. "To think that I should have brought you all the way from home for this."

And poor Mamma was so sorry for me that she actually cried too!

We made a little coffin out of some cardboard, and wrapped him in cotton-wool, and buried him in the old garden of the inn. That was the end of our canary nursling. I have a good deal more to tell you about Coo-coo, but for the present I will leave off with this piece of advice. "Never put bird-cages on the window-sill."

COO-COO'S SECOND HUSBAND

I TOLD you the sad end of poor Frise-tête, but the history of Coo-Coo is by no means finished yet. She had not escaped without any injury, though at first we thought she was not hurt. But as soon as she recovered a little from her dreadful fright we saw to our great sorrow that one of her wings hung down in a most sad and helpless manner. I turned away shuddering.

"Is it quite broked, Mamma?" asked my little brother Charley. He looked at it with the greatest interest and curiosity. "Horrid little boy, I said to myself! And it does seem sometimes as if boys had very little feeling, though I don't really think so of poor Charley.

"Oh, Mamma," I said, still shutting my eyes, "if she is so badly hurt, it would be better to put her out of her agony at once. Couldn't you give her chloroform or some stuff like what they kill horses with in the streets in Paris?"

"It's not so bad as all that," said Mamma cheerfully. "Sally, you mustn't be silly. Open your eyes – there is nothing dreadful to see."

I had to open my eyes then – Mamma was holding Coo-coo tenderly in her hand. I wondered how she had courage to do it. The poor little thing seemed to know her, and to nestle down confidingly.

"I don't think it hurts her except when she tries to stick it out," said Charley.

"No, I don't think it does," said Mamma, "but I'd like some one who understands little birds, to see her."

"If the gracious lady will excuse me saying so," said the landlord's daughter, who was standing close by full of sympathy, "there is a gentleman near here who makes it his business to bring up little canaries from eggs. He is very clever. We might go to see him, and ask him to look at the poor wing."

"Certainly," said Mamma, "that would be a very good idea. But I don't quite know how to take Coo-coo. I am afraid it is not good for her to hold her so long in my hand, and the cage is completely smashed."

"We have an empty cage – a very small one, that used to hang at the door with our old starling," said the good-natured Anna, and off she ran for it.

We settled Coo-coo as well as we could with some cotton-wool for her to rest upon. But once in the cage, so long as she did not attempt to flutter about, she did not seem very bad, and my spirits rose a little. Still we must have seemed rather a doleful procession making our way along the street, for my face and eyes were swollen with crying, and Charley looked very grave, as we followed Mamma and Anna, Mamma carrying the starling's cage containing poor Coo-coo, as if it was the most wonderful treasure that ever was seen. And all the people came out of the shops and houses to look at us, for already the news had spread of the terrible misfortune that had happened to the little "foreign" lady, and several people whose shops we had sometimes been to nodded their heads, and said, "Poor little Miss," very sympathizingly, as we passed. I couldn't help feeling rather ashamed, and I wished my eyes were not quite so red.

It was such a funny place where the gentleman of the canaries, as Anna called him, lived. We went down a very narrow passage, and, across a little court-yard and down another passage and up a rickety stair and at last found ourselves in a room filled with birds – nothing but birds, and all canaries! There were cages and cages full of them – grown up ones and old ones, and baby ones just hatched. Some were singing brilliantly, so that we could scarcely hear ourselves speak, and the man who had come forward to meet us took us into another room, a little kitchen, where there were only one or two cages and no noise.

He was a shoemaker as well as a birdfancier – he had on a leather apron, and he had a half-made boot in his hand when we went in. But plainly, what he considered his real calling in life was canaries – I think indeed he thought the world was made for canaries, and he only looked at us with interest because "we belonged to Coo-coo," as Charley said.

"It is not broken," he said, after he had carefully examined the poor wing, stretching it out in a way that made me shiver to see; "it is only sprained. It will get better, but it will perhaps never be quite well. See – this is all that can be done," and he took a feather from a cup with some fine oil in it, standing on a table. "You must paint it with oil – so – two or three times a day. You see?" and Mamma nodded her head, and said, yes, she quite understood.

"She will get better," repeated the man, "she will not die of her wing, but she will die of loneliness. You must get her a companion."

I came forward eagerly.

"Mamma," I said, "would he sell us one? I have two marks." A mark is the same as a shilling.

Mamma asked him the question. He looked round his many cages doubtfully. "I did not want to sell any just now," he said, and I really don't think he did. "But it would be a shame for her to pine to death. Yes – I can let you have one of these young birds for three marks. Choose which you like," and he pointed to a cage containing three or four.

"I have only two marks," I whispered.

"And there is a new cage to get," said Charley. But Mamma was very kind.

"I will help you," she said. "Yes, sir, we will take one of these. You are sure they will be friends?"

"No fear," said the man in his queer, jerky way, "and this young bird will sing like a heavenly angel next spring. Will you take him now, or shall I bring him this evening?"

"We have to get a new cage," said Mamma; "I should be glad if you would bring him."

Then we set off again with Coo-coo in the starling's cage, and we had another procession down the street to the ironmonger's shop, where we chose a beautiful cage. It was awfully kind of Mamma, wasn't it?

And that evening after poor little Frise-tête was buried in the garden under a little rose-bush we made the new cage all ready, and Coo-coo and the new bird, whom we fixed to call "Fritz," as he was a German, took up their quarters in it. They were very good friends – indeed Charley and I thought it rather horrid of Coo-coo to be so quickly consoled.

"I don't believe she has any heart at all," I said. "I don't believe a bit that she would have pined alone."

But the "canary-gentleman," every time he came – and he was really very good, he came every two or three days to see how the wing was and would not take any more money – assured us that if she had not had a companion she would have died.

And certainly I must say that Fritz deserved her to like him. He was so good to her. You could scarcely believe a little bird could have had so much sense. For some days she could only move about stiffly, and it was difficult for her to pick up seeds. And just fancy, Fritz used to bring her seeds in his beak and feed her! It was the prettiest sight possible.

Her wing never got quite well, though it left off hurting her. But she never could stretch it out quite evenly with the other. And about a year ago, after two years of peaceful life with Fritz, she died quite suddenly. She was perfectly well the evening before, and early the next morning she was lying in a little rumpled-up heap in a corner, dead! Poor Coo-coo – they thought she died of old age. I can't help wondering where birds go to when they die – they are so innocent!

Still they are very heartless. That very morning beside his poor little dead wife, Fritz was pecking away at his seeds and singing as if nothing were the matter. So we have not troubled to get a new companion for him, and when he dies I don't much think I shall care to keep any more pet birds. He is very alive at present however. He really sings so very loudly sometimes that we are obliged to cover him up with a dark cloth to pretend it is night.

I hear him carrolling away now as brilliantly as possible!

HARRY'S REWARD

I HATE the sea, I hate bathing, and I don't want to learn to swim. What's the use of learning to swim? I'm not going to be a sailor. I don't like ships, and I don't want ever to go in one, and I just wish, oh, I do wish papa hadn't come here!"

"Harry! how can you?" said his sister Dora. "Papa who is so kind, and when we have all been looking forward so to his coming."

"I know – that's the worst of it," said Harry. "I've been looking forward as much as any one, and now it's all spoilt by his saying I must learn to swim."

"I only wish I could learn!" sighed Dora. She was two years older than Harry, but she had lately had a bad fever. The family had come to the seaside to give her change of air, but not for some weeks yet, if at all this summer, was poor Dora to be allowed to bathe. And she loved the sea, and bathing, and boating, and everything to do with the sea. She was like her father, who, though not a sailor, had travelled much and far, both by land and water; whereas Harry "took after," as the country people say, his mother, who had lived in her youth in a warm climate, and shivered at every breath of cold or even fresh air. It did not matter so much for a delicate lady to be afraid of the wind and the sea, but it was a great pity for a healthy boy to be fanciful or timid; and Harry's mother herself was very anxious that he should become more manly. She was very disappointed that she could not get him to bathe when they came to the seaside, but it was no use, and she and nurse and Dora all agreed that the only thing to do was to "wait till Papa came."

Papa had come now, and Harry had had his first "dip." It wasn't so very bad after all, but just when he was getting up his spirits again, and thinking ten minutes or so every morning were quickly over, all his fears and dislike grew worse than ever when his father told him that in a day or two he should begin to teach him to swim.

"Everybody, especially every English man and boy, should know how to swim," Papa had said. "There is never any knowing the use it may be of, both for one's self and others."

"Isn't it very hard to learn?" Harry asked, not venturing to say more.

"It takes some patience," his father said. "But by the time I have to go – in three weeks or so – you should be able to swim fairly well, if you have a lesson every day."

And Harry came home to tell Dora his troubles, which he worked himself up to think were very great ones indeed.

There was no shirking it however. Papa, though very kind, was very firm, and once he said a thing, it had to be done. So with a rather white face, and looking very solemn, poor Harry set off every day for his swimming lesson.

He was a quick and clever boy, and a strong boy, and this his father knew. He would not have forced Harry to do anything for which he was unfit, or that could have done him any harm. And after the first shivers of fear and tremulous clinging to his father's hand were got over, it went on better and faster than could have been expected. Harry didn't mind its being difficult once he had left off being afraid, and a day or two before his father had to leave them, Harry had the pleasure of hearing him say to his mother, "He swims already very nearly as well as I do myself."

Now I shall tell you why I have called this little story "Harry's Reward."

Seacliff, the place at which these children were spending the summer, was not a fashionable watering-place, with terraces and donkey-carriages and bathing-machines, but a little village, where one or two cottages were to be had for the season. There were also a few gentlemen's houses in the neighbourhood, so that in fine weather merry groups met at the little sheltered bay among the rocks, where the bathing was pleasantest.

One day, not very long before they were to leave Seacliff, Harry, having finished his own morning swim, set off to walk home at his ease, whistling as he went. He had chosen what was called the high path, a footpath up above the lane, which was the regular road from the village to the beach, but from which the lane could be seen all the way.

It was a lovely morning – bright and peaceful – and Harry, as he went, wished that poor Dora had got leave to bathe.

"Next year," he thought, "I hope we shall come again, and then what fun we shall have. Dolly will learn to swim in no time."

Suddenly a sound disturbed his pleasant thoughts. A horse and cart or carriage of some kind was rushing wildly along, coming nearer and nearer. Surely the horse, or pony, as Harry now saw it to be, was running away. The boy who had never been a coward except about "sea things," tumbled down the steep grassy slope in no time, and stood in the middle of the road eager to see what he could do. The flying vehicle was near enough now for him to see that it was the pony-carriage of two girls, a little older than Dora, whose home was one of the pretty houses a little way from Seacliff. He had often seen them drive down in it to the shore to bathe.

But what a queer figure was driving now. The pony was not running away, on the contrary, it seemed as if it could not run fast enough to please the driver; a girl with hair streaming, dressed only in a blue flannel bathing gown, streaming too, who stood upright in the carriage, lashing the poor pony as if she were mad, while from time to time she screamed, in a shrill and yet choking voice, "Help, help – for God's sake, help!"

"What is it?" screamed Harry too, as she passed. She would not stop, but she threw back some words on the wind.

"My sister – Alice – drowning. Going to the village to fetch some one – can swim."

And then again came the terrible cry, as if she hardly knew what she was saying, "Help, help!"

"Oh," thought Harry, "if she could have stopped and taken me back, we'd have been at the shore in a moment. I can swim. I can swim."

And he could run too. It was not so very far from the bathing-place. How he got there Harry never could tell. On he rushed, tearing off his clothes as he went. Off flew hat, jacket, collar and shirt, till there was nothing but trousers and tennis-shoes to pitch away, as in his little clinging woven drawers only, brave Harry flung himself, fearless and dauntless, into the sea, and struck out for the round dark object, poor Alice's head, which it had taken but an instant to point out to him.

"I can swim! I can swim!" were the magic words with which he was able at once to push off the friendly hands that would have drawn him back, whose owners now stood watching him with flushed faces and tearful eyes, murmuring many a fervent prayer for his success, or saying aloud with clasped hands, "The brave boy, the splendid little fellow! It is her only chance!"

It was her only chance. Long before poor Lilian, for all her headlong drive, was back with a sailor she had met just outside the village, Alice would have sunk to rise no more. She had been caught by the current and carried out far beyond her depth, and when Harry, panting, labouring, but swimming valiantly still, got near enough to catch the long plait of hair, and so draw her gently after him to shore, she had all but lost consciousness. Better so, perhaps, for had she struggled or clung to him, both would have been lost.

As it was, there were plenty of hands to carry them to land, once they were within a safe distance; but Harry was the hero, Harry, alone and unaided, had saved a human life, for of all the score or so of watchers on the beach, not one knew how to swim.