Page:Under the Sun.djvu/378

354 liberty of turning round the seed-boxes, so that the birds, who meanwhile had been eating voraciously, could get no more. The barbarous fact escaped observation, and, remorse gnawing at my heart, I awaited the morrow with anxiety. Would the birds be tame? But the thought kept recurring to me in the night watches — would they be dead? They were not dead, however: on the contrary, they were very much alive. Indeed their extraordinary sprightliness attracted my wife’s attention, and all through breakfast she kept drawing my attention to the conversation being kept up by the two birds.

“How happy they are together!” she said. “And how hungry!” I thought.

Breakfast over, she proceeded to attend to her birds, and then the turned boxes were discovered.

“Oh!” she said, “how stupid I have been! Just imagine, these poor birds have had no seed all day! I forgot to turn their seed-boxes round!”

I cut short her self-reproaches and expressions of sympathy.

“Never mind, dear: it has done them no harm apparently. Besides, we can see now whether starving does really tame them. Offer the bullfinch a hemp seed in your fingers.”

And the great experiment was tried. I approached to watch. The hungry bird recognized his favorite morsel, but the fingers had still terrors for his untutored mind. “Have a little patience,” I said, as I saw my wife’s face clouding. The bullfinch mind was grievously agitated. He was very hungry, and there close to him was a hemp seed. But then it was in those dangerous-looking hands. An empty stomach and timid heart fought out