I said nothing. I thought I had not known my new friend long enough to find fault with him, but I wanted very much to ask him if he really thought English sparrows did do their duty by human beings.
“Would you like to see my little house?” he asked.
“Very much,” I replied, and I followed him as he flew to another tree. We were now further up the street where we could look back at our red brick house which is a double one, and quite wide. Now we were in front of one that stood a little way from its neighbors. It was tall and narrow, and in the middle of its high north wall was a small hole where a brick had fallen out.
Chummy pointed to it proudly. “There’s not a snugger sparrow bedroom in the city than that,” he said, “for right behind the open place is a hole in the brick work next the furnace chimney. No matter how cold and hungry I am when I go to bed, I’m kept warm till breakfast time, when I can look for scraps. Many a feeble old sparrow and many a weak one has died in the bitter cold this winter. They went to bed with empty crops and never woke up. We’ve had twelve weeks of frost, instead of our usual six, and this is only the fifth day of thawing weather that we’ve had all winter.”
“Everything seems topsy-turvy this winter,” I said. “Human beings are short of coal and food, and they’re worried and anxious. I am very sorry for them.
“But times will improve, Chummy. The old birds say that black hours come, but no darkness can keep the sun from breaking through. He is the king of the world.”
Chummy raised his little dark head up to the sunlight. “I’m not complaining, Dicky. I wish every little bird in the world had such a snug home as mine.”
“How did the hole come in the wall?” I asked.
“Some workmen had a scaffold up there to repair the top of the chimney. When they took it down, they knocked a brick out.”
“Is it large enough for you in nesting time?”
“Oh, yes; don’t you want to come and see it? You’re not afraid?”
“Oh, no,” I said warmly. “I know whenever I get a good look into a bird’s eye whether I can trust him or not.”
“Come along, then,” said Chummy, deeply gratified, and I flew beside him to his little house.
CHAPTER VI
CHUMMY TELLS THE STORY OF A NAUGHTY SQUIRREL
OH, how snug!” I exclaimed. “You have a little hall and a bedroom, and how clean it is! The old birds say they like to see a bird tidy his nest from one year to another. Do you keep the same mate?”
“I do,” he replied. “I always have Jennie, but as you probably know, sparrows don’t pair till spring. In the winter the birds are in flocks. Jennie is spending these hard months with her parents downtown near the station because the food supply is better there. I often go to see her, and I expect her back soon to begin housekeeping. We like to get ahead of the others in nesting, for there are evil birds who try every year to drive us from our desirable home.”
“Everything born has to fight,” I said cheerfully.
“I don’t know much about canaries,” said Chummy. “All that I have seen were very exclusive and haughty, and looked down on us street birds.”
“Some of my family are that way,” I sighed, “but I have been much with human beings and my little head has more wisdom in it.”
“I like you,” Chummy began to say heartily; then he stopped short, cried out, and said, “Duck your head quick and come inside!”
I scuttled from his wide open hallway into his little bedroom, wondering what had happened. A shower of nutshells had just been dropped past our beaks. “Who’s doing that?” I asked.
“Squirrie—he hates me because he can’t get a foothold to explore this house.”
“And who is Squirrie?” I asked.
“The worst little rascal of a squirrel that you ever saw. He respects nobody, and what do you think is his favorite song?—not that he can sing. His voice is like a crow’s.”
“I can’t imagine what kind of songs a squirrel would sing,” I said.
“I’ll run over it for you,” said Chummy, “though I haven’t a very good voice myself.
“‘I care for nobody, no not I,
And nobody cares for me.
I live in the middle of Pleasant Street
And happy will I be!’
“Now what do you think of that for a selfish song in these hard times?”
I laughed heartily. “Perhaps you take Squirrie too seriously. I’d like to see the little rogue. Does he live in this house of yours?”
“Yes, right up over us under the roof. He gnawed a hole through from the outside this summer, and stored an enormous quantity of nuts that he stole from good Mrs. Lacey at the corner grocery on the next street. He has an enormous place to scamper about in if he wishes to stretch his legs. He says in the corner of it he has a delightfully warm little bed-place, lined with tiny soft bits of wool and fur torn from ladies’ dresses, for he has the run of most of the bedrooms in the neighborhood. Have you seen the two old maids that live in the big attic of this house?”
“Yes, my mistress calls them the bachelor girls,” I said politely.
“Girls,” he said scornfully; “they’re more like old women. Well, anyway, they’re afraid of mice and rats, and when Squirrie wakes up and scampers across the boards to his pantry to get a nut, and rolls it about, and gnaws it, and nibbles it, they nearly have a fit, and run to the landlady and hurry her up the three flights of stairs.
“She listens and pants, and says, ‘It must be a rat, it’s too noisy for a mouse.’ Then she goes down cellar and gets a rat-trap and props its big jaws open with a bit of cheese and sets it in a corner of the room.
“Squirrie watches them through a tiny hole in the trapdoor in the ceiling that he made to spy on them, and he nearly dies laughing, for he loves to tease people, and he hisses at them in a low voice, ‘The trap isn’t made yet that will catch me. I hope you’ll nip your own old toes in it.’”
“What very disrespectful talk,” I exclaimed.
“Oh, he doesn’t care for anybody, and the other night his dreadful wish came true, and he was so delighted that he most lost his breath and had squirrel apoplexy.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
The sparrow ran his little tongue out over his beak, for he dearly loves to talk, and went on, “You see, the bachelor ladies were moving their furniture about to make their room look prettier, and they forgot the trap, and Miss Maggie did catch her toe in it, and there was such a yelling and screaming that it woke me out of a sound sleep.
“The lodgers all came running upstairs with fire extinguishers, and flat irons, and pokers, and one man had a revolver. I thought the house was on fire, and I flew out of my little hole in the wall to this tree. I came here, and from a high limb I could look right in the attic window. The lodgers were all bursting into the room and poor Miss Maggie, in curl papers and pink pajamas, was shrieking and dancing on one foot, and holding up the other with the trap on the toe of her bedroom slipper.
“Out on the roof, Squirrie was bending down to look at her. He was lying on his wicked little stomach, and he laughed so hard that at last he had to roll over in the snow on the roof to get cool. He looked terrible, and we all hoped he was going to pass away in the night, but the next morning as we sat round on the tree talking about him, and trying to think of some good thing he had done, he poked his head out of the hole which is his front door, and made the most ugly faces at us that you can imagine. He is