Page:Under the Sun.djvu/382

358 the flurry and splash is going on he watches the canary with all his eyes. The canary sings beautifully, not with the student note that in the trained bird makes a room uninhabitable, but a soft, untutored song that nature whispered to him bar by bar, and so sweet is it that the matter-of-fact bullfinch always listens with attention, until, remembering his own powers, he settles down in a ball of feathers on some favorite vase, and chuckles obstinately through a rustic lay. But my wife ought to have written the account of her own birds herself, for she knows them better than I.

And the little things have found out how gentle and loving she is to God’s creatures; and when the room is quiet, and she is sitting working, the bullfinch will leave off his scrambling among the picture cords, and the canary his fruitless tugging at the spills, to sit down on her lap and shoulder, and tell her, as they best can, how fond they are of her.

For me they entertain only a distant regard; but I like them immensely for all that. At any rate, though I speak of them as my wife’s birds, I should feel hurt if any one thought that they were not my birds too.