Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/88

Rh much annoyed with the girl for her cruelty, and had dismissed her, and now she wanted Carl to take her bird and nurse it, as she knew nothing about canaries.

Carl had just come in from school. He threw down his books, took the shawl from the cage and looked in. The poor little canary was sitting in a corner. Its eyes were half shut, one leg hung loose, and it was making faint chirps of distress.

Carl was very much interested in it. He got Mrs. Montague to help him, and together they split matches, tore up strips of muslin, and bandaged the broken leg. He put the little bird back in the cage, and it seemed more comfortable. "I think he will do now," he said to Mrs. Montague, "but hadn't you better leave him with me for a few days?"

She gladly agreed to this and went away, after telling him that the bird's name was Dick.

The next morning at the breakfast table, I heard Carl telling his mother that as soon as he woke up he sprang out of bed and went to see how his canary was. During the night, poor, foolish Dick had picked off the splints from his leg, and now it was as bad as ever. "I shall have to perform a surgical operation," he said.

I did not know what he meant, so I watched him when, after breakfast, he brought the bird down to his mother's room. She held it while he took a pair of sharp scissors, and cut its leg right off a little way above the broken place. Then he put some vaseline on the tiny stump, bound it up, and left Dick in his mother's care. All the morning, as she sat sewing, she watched him to see that he did not pick the bandage away.

When Carl came home, Dick was so much better that he had managed to fly up on his perch, and was eating