Dickey Downy Part 11

How she arched her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders and winked her eyes and wrinkled her forehead and pursed her rosy lips and tilted her nose and gesticulated with her slender hand and tapped the pavement with her umbrella point, pa.s.sing from each phase of expression to the next with a rapidity truly wonderful. Occasionally she went through with these strange grimaces all at once. She was indeed a whirlwind of language, an avalanche of emotion.

Her voice was high pitched and shrill, so that every one on the street must have heard her as she exclaimed:

"Oh, Nell, how perfectly lovely your new hat is! Turn around so that I can see the other side. Oh-h, ah-h, that darling little bird with its glossy plumage among the velvet is too sweet for anything! If anything it is prettier than Kate Smith's hat with the thrush's head and wings, although I'll admit hers is awfully stylish. You ought to see my new hat. Ah, I tell you it's a beauty; soft crown of silvery stuff, and on one side a tall aigrette and a dear little cedar-bird, and toward the back is the cutest, cunningest humming-bird with its tiny green body and long bill. It looks as if it were ready to fly or to sing. I selected the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g for sister May's new hat too. It is brown velvet and has an oriole on it; you know they are so showy and bright it makes you almost think you are in the woods. At Madame Oiseau Mort's, where I get my millinery, there was another hat I had a notion to take. It was built up with robins' wings and part of a tern was on it too, I believe--just lovely! but afterward I was glad I didn't buy it, for that decoration is more common. I counted nine hats in church last Sunday trimmed with gulls. Of course they were pretty, for a handsome bird makes any hat pretty.

"By the way, Nell, I must tell you something perfectly ridiculous! Do you know papa pretends it's wicked for women to wear birds on their hats or trim their gowns with feather tr.i.m.m.i.n.g? Did you ever? I told him we'd be a mighty sorry-looking set going around like a lot of female Dunkards or Salvation Army women, without a bit of style, and he said those women hadn't the sin on their souls of wearing birds that had been killed on purpose to minister to their vanity; that he'd rather be a peaceful-faced Dunkard woman or Salvationist with her plain bonnet and her gentle heart than a gay society b.u.t.terfly with her empty head loaded down with dead birds.

"Isn't it perfectly horrid for him to talk like that? He is such an old fogy in his ideas he actually makes me tired. Then he went on to say that never again could he believe that women are the tender-hearted creatures they have always been supposed to be, when they show themselves so eager to be decked with the innocent songsters whose lives are sacrificed by the million on the altar of fashion; the men have always been taught that woman's nature was morally superior to theirs, but we'd have to give up this criminal fad which we have persisted in at such a fearful price of bird life before we could be regarded as other than monstrously cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y. However, he prophesied that the fashion can't continue much longer anyway, because there soon won't be any birds left, and then, he says, we'll have a world without its sweetest music. It will be hushed by the folly of woman.

"Oh, Nell, don't you dislike to have anybody lecture you like that? It makes one feel so uncomfortable. I don't suppose it's so very wrong to wear bird tr.i.m.m.i.n.g or our minister's wife wouldn't do it. You know her black velvet hat with that big bird on it with the red points on the wings, is one of the most striking hats that come to church. And her feather m.u.f.f is so elegant, awfully expensive too. And what would her hat look like without that bird on it, I'd like to know? So if it isn't wicked for her it isn't wicked for us, Nell, and I'm not going to give up looking nice just to please papa. He'd like to have me dress as antiquated as old Mrs. Noah when she came out of the ark, but I'm not going to encourage him in his old-fashioned notions. And here, Nell, just listen to this! Don't you think, he says the Episcopal Prayer Book ought to be revised for the women worshipers and omit that part of the litany where it says, 'From pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy, good Lord, deliver us.' What fol-de-rol!" And being out of breath she stopped talking and they walked away down the street together.

CHAPTER XIII

d.i.c.kEY'S VISIT

Kind hearts are more than coronets.

--_Tennyson._

Plainly furnished and small was the house to which I was taken by Miss Katharine to stay during Polly's absence at her grandmother's in the country. But though it was dest.i.tute of fine furnishings, it was the abode of peace and love, and its lowly roof sheltered n.o.ble and kindly hearts. The two sisters lived there alone, supported mainly by Katharine's earnings in the millinery store, though occasionally the sister, who was lame, added something to their little income by making paper flowers and other articles of bright tissues. It was her business to keep the house while Miss Katharine was at the shop, and very long and lonely the hours must have seemed to her while her sister was away.

The first day I was there a boy whom she addressed as John Charles came to the house. Apparently he had been carefully trained, for he raised his cap when the lame girl opened the door to his knock. His manners were fine, for he remained standing after he entered until she had first seated herself, as if to say, "A gentleman will not sit while a lady stands."

He had come to inquire if she wished to buy some cooking apples.

"They are very nice," said John Charles briskly, quite as if he were an old salesman. "No mashed or decayed ones among them."

"I have been wanting some apples," said Eliza. "If I knew what yours were like I might buy some."

"I have a few here to show," and John Charles drew from a small paper sack one or two bright rosy apples. "There, try one," he said. "You will find them nice and juicy and sour enough to cook quickly."

Eliza bit into one and expressed her approval of the fruit. "They will make delicious apple-sauce, I'm sure," she said. After inquiring the price she told the young merchant he might carry in a peck.

With a business-like flourish John Charles took a small note-book and pencil from his pocket and wrote something at the top of the leaf.

"I'm not delivering now," he said as he returned the note-book to his pocket. "I'm only taking orders; but I'll have your apples here in an hour."

Eliza bit her lip to keep back a smile. A boy in knee pants transacting business like a grown man, appeared quite amusing to her.

"Oh, I see," she said. "You take orders for your goods. You don't sell from door to door."

"No, indeed!" answered John Charles with a lofty air. "That's too much like peddling. I won't peddle. I prefer to get regular customers and take orders and fill them."

While he had been talking he had been glancing toward me where I hung in the window, and he now politely asked if he might come to look at me. Eliza gave a surprised consent, but watched the boy closely as he stood near and chirped to me calling me, "Po-o-o-r d.i.c.key Downy," as soon as he found out my name. I saw from the way Eliza kept her eyes on his movements that she was expecting he would do something to hurt me, but in this she was pleasantly disappointed, for he never once touched my cage and cooed as softly when he spoke to me as Polly herself might have done.

I was quite afraid of him at first, for ever since my experience with the wicked schoolboys who clubbed us in the linden trees, and my later experience with Joe, I disliked boys very much.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Bobolink.]

When John Charles had bidden Eliza "good-morning" and tipped his hat again and the door closed after him, she said to me: "Why, d.i.c.key, that was a new kind of a boy! He never once tried to hurt you or to scare you. It shows that all boys are not rough, and I shall always like John Charles, for he is a little gentleman."

To this sentiment I fully agreed, and I thought, "Alas! why are not all boys as gentle as John Charles?"

In a few hours I felt as much at home with Eliza as if I had always lived there, and I was much pleased when I heard her tell Katharine at the supper table the next evening how much she had enjoyed having me with her.

"A bird is ever so much better company than a clock," she said; "though when I'm here by myself I always like to hear the clock tick. It seems as if I were not so entirely alone. But a bird is better. I talked to d.i.c.key to-day and he twittered back. He has such a cute way of perking his little head to one side just as knowing as you please, and he acts exactly as if he were considering whether he should answer 'yes' or no' to what I say, and then it is such fun to watch him smooth down his feathers. He washes and irons them so nicely and works away as industriously as if he were afraid he'd lose his 'job.'"

Miss Katharine rose from the table and stuck a lump of sugar for me to taste between the wires of my cage.

"I am surrounded by poor dead birds in the store all day," she observed, "and spend so much of my time sewing their wings and heads and tails on hats and sort boxfuls of them for customers to look at, that even a living bird saddens me."

"Yes, it must be very depressing. What a shame to kill them; they are so cute and pretty and such happy little creatures! See how cunning he looks nibbling at that sugar," and the sister joined Miss Katharine in watching me.

"But do you know, Kathy, I don't believe that women would continue wearing bird tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs if they stopped a minute to think about it. It doesn't seem wrong to them because they never considered the question.

They simply haven't thought about it at all."

"Somebody set the fashion and they all followed like a flock of sheep,"

answered the other with a sneering laugh.

"Yes, that's just the way. They go along without thinking. They only know it is the style, and they don't stop to inquire whether it can be indulged in innocently or hurtfully. Now I believe that if their attention was particularly called to it, the most of them would quit it."

Miss Katharine brightened into a smile and half unclasped her little satchel.

"If a bird could talk," pursued the lame girl, "what a revelation it could make. What lovely things it could tell us of that upper kingdom of the air where it floats and the distant land it sees! What sweet secrets of nature it knows that man with all his wisdom can never find out. And then its gift of song! Why, if thousands and thousands of dollars were spent in training the finest voice in the world it could never equal the notes of a bird. A woman who could perfectly imitate a lark's carol would make her fortune in a month. The world would go wild over her."

"But as she can't do that she has the lark killed to stick on her hat, and then she goes wild over it," interrupted Miss Kathy.

Her sister smiled at this outburst and continued: "While I was working at that morning-glory wreath to-day I couldn't help but watch this bird of Polly's with its innocent little antics, and it made me see more than ever how wrong it is to cage and kill them. I just felt as though I ought to do something to help save the birds and, Kathy, I wonder if we were to invite some of our friends here some evening and call their attention to the subject, and explain the wrong to them, if we couldn't do some good that way? Maybe they'd decide not to wear birds on their hats."

"We might try, sister, I would be perfectly willing to try; but I'm afraid it wouldn't do much good, for we have but little influence. As long as fashionable and wealthy ladies will do it, the poorer cla.s.ses will not give it up very readily."

"But they have hearts which can be appealed to. They have feelings which can be roused," answered the lame girl eagerly. "Being alone so much I have more time to think over these things than the shop girls who are hurried and busy all day, and perhaps n.o.body has ever tried to show them how wrong it is; but I really believe some of them could be influenced, if once they would seriously think of the wrong they are doing. That is the reason, Kathy, I suggested to get a lot of them together to talk about saving the birds."

The gentle cripple had never even heard of the great Audubon. She did not know that societies existed in many States called by the name of the distinguished naturalist, engaged in the same merciful work.

Miss Katharine drew from the satchel the paper clipping and handed it to her sister, saying: "This is a coincidence surely; I cut this out of the daily paper at the store some time ago, intending to give it to you, but I always forgot it. It is an account of the proceedings of a convention in one of the big cities. You will see by reading it that somebody else has been thinking your identical thoughts."

"How lovely that is!" exclaimed Eliza when she had carefully read the notice. "How I should have enjoyed being at that meeting. We will help those people all we can, Kathy, by stirring up our acquaintances here. You invite the girls for tomorrow night and I'll have the house ready for them."

That I had been an inspiration to this gentle girl in her work of mercy was a great joy to me, and all the next day I was constantly bursting into a round of cheerful twitters and I swung myself in my hoop as fast as I could make it go.

The best room was swept and dusted with the greatest care, and a few extra chairs moved in from other parts of the house. My cage was transferred from its usual hook to the parlor, and about eight o'clock the guests thronged in and soon every seat was filled. They were princ.i.p.ally girls who were clerks in stores, or worked in shops and offices, and many of them were very smartly dressed. A few, like Miss Katharine and her sister, were more plainly attired; but all were lively and full of girlish fun and seemed to enjoy being together. My cage hung in view of every one, and I was proud to be selected as an object-lesson by the lame hostess in her introductory appeal to her guests to help save the birds. She so presented the facts that before the evening was over she had roused an enthusiasm in some of them almost equal to her own, and several pledges were given not to wear birds again.

"There is something new in the way of womanly cruelty which isn't so well known as the destruction of the birds," remarked one of the company. "The humane society ought to get after the women who wear baby lamb tr.i.m.m.i.n.g."

"The way sealskins are procured is also very cruel," said another girl.