Part 3

That was the first time he took me out, but by no means the last. Soon we began to go out every day. He would take me on to the lawn and sit on the steps and watch me as I looked at the grass and the flowers and the wonderful birds flying in the trees. I couldn’t help watching them and trying to imitate them. It was no use, though, for my poor wing would not let me fly.

Chapter IV

My First Sand Bath

From now on we went out every day when it was fine, and we grew to understand each other more and more. When Fessor came into the den I used to chirp and tell him how glad I was to see him. Then he would snap his fingers and I would run towards him, and when he put his hand down to the floor, I would jump in, and he would lift me up to the desk. Then, if he had a few minutes to spare, he would chew up pinion nuts for me and let me eat them from his lips; or, if he felt hurried, he would give me three or four and let me eat them myself. I soon grew to enjoy being on his desk. It was so nice to hear him talk! And I think it must have been because he had two or three dictionaries always at hand that I soon grew to understand lots of words. You see, I used to hop about on the dictionaries hour after hour, and eat from them, and often when Fessor opened the pages and pointed with his finger at certain words, he would read them aloud, as he said, to get the different pronunciations; so that, as I looked where he pointed, I soon knew the words pretty well myself.

You see, I was different from other birds. If I had been out of doors all the time with my own father and mother and other birds, I should have known nothing of men and women talk. I should have learned the things that out-door birds learn,--all about the clouds and winds, and bugs and flies and worms and insects, and how to get my own meals. But as it was, I had nothing to do with getting my own food, and so I naturally took to human knowledge in order to occupy my mind and my time.

One day Fessor said to Edith: “I’m going to give Scraggles a sand pile. She ought to have something to take a bath in.” Wasn’t that funny? I didn’t know what he meant. A sand pile, and a bath! But I was soon to learn. In an hour or so he came in with a large box-cover full of sand. He spread out several newspapers on the floor, and then put the sand box on top of them. Well, as soon as I saw the glistening stuff in the sand, I thought it must be something good to eat, and I went and pecked at it so hard that the sand filled up my bill, and got into my eyes and nose so that I was nearly choked. I pecked at it again and got another dose, and I danced and shook my head real hard in order to get the tickling stuff out of my nose and bill. Fessor and Edith stood by looking on, and how they laughed! They laughed, and laughed, and laughed again, for I had to scratch my head all over with my foot to make it feel comfortable after all that sand.

Then Fessor came and said: “Now you wait, Scraggles, and I’ll show you how to take a sand bath.” And he took a handful of the sand and sprinkled it all over me, and as it trickled through my feathers onto my skin, how good it felt! He did this several times, and then all at once I thought I would scratch a place for myself in the sand and then throw the sand with my feet all over my body under my wings. And that was delightful. It was a new sensation, and a good and pleasant one. I felt so fresh and bright afterwards that every day, directly Fessor came into the room after lunch, I was ready for a bath. He nearly always sprinkled the sand over me, and he must have enjoyed it almost as much as I did, for sometimes he stayed with me at the sand pile a full half-hour.

Chapter V

On the Fessor’s Desk and My Hiding-Place

Fessor used to spend an awful lot of time at his desk. The time he wasted there was more than I could ever tell, for he would be hours at a time doing nothing but moving that pen across the paper, making those nasty little dark scratches that in time I learned were called writing. When he came into his den and sat down at the desk I would come to his feet and call, and he would lower his hand for me to jump into, and then he would lift me up on the desk. I generally hunted first for a few pinion nuts, after which I wanted Fessor to play with me. Sometimes he was so busy with his “paper scratching” that he wouldn’t reply when I chirped to him. Then I got right on his paper, and hopped along between the hand that held his blotter and the hand with which he wrote, and there, right under his very nose, and generally on the spot where he wanted to write, would stand and ask him why he didn’t play with me. Sometimes he gently pushed me aside or lifted me out of his way, but generally he smiled at me--and I did love to see him smile--and would let me perch on his fingers or go through some antic or other, such as carrying me around the room on the top of his head, or holding me in his hand and swinging me to and fro as if I were in a nest on a bough swinging hard in a storm. Those were great times.

But sometimes that bothering old pen annoyed me, and I would seize it in my bill as Fessor made it scratch on the paper. As I held on he went on writing, and that used to jerk my head up and down, and, of course, it dragged me right across the paper. But I didn’t intend to let go; I wanted him to stop and talk to me, so back and forth we’d go, he trying to write with me holding onto the pen, and I determined not to let go, my head bobbing up and down to the movements of his writing and my feet slipping over the paper and smearing the ink, until I got too tired to hold on and had to let go.

Now and again he was determined not to let me touch that pen, and then we had a time. He made a barricade of his left hand to protect his writing hand, and tried to keep me away like that, but I showed him how spunky a baby sparrow could be. I pecked at the pen through his fingers, and watched for the least opening, and the moment he gave me a chance, I darted in and seized the pen. Then he tried to shake me off, generally laughing at me, and calling me a queer little birdie all the time, and he even lifted me up while I held on to the pen with my beak, and in that way tried to discourage me from fighting it. But I don’t think he ever knew how I disliked that wretched little stick. Why should it be in Fessor’s hands all the time? I wanted him to take me in his hands and go out for a walk with me, and I didn’t like his spending so much time pushing that pen back and forth.

One day, after we had had a pretty hard fight with the pen, I made a very strange discovery. When Fessor had gone away I saw that the writing on some of the sheets of paper was about me, and I’m going to let you read it. Here is what he wrote:

“Just now I put her on the sash that she might enjoy the sunshine, but the moment I began to write she flew down upon my desk and seized the pen with eager fury. To protect my pen as I write I have barricaded my writing hand with my left hand and the little creature is making desperate and frantic efforts to get inside. Every crevice she attacks, and tries to worm her way in, struggling with invincible determination and occasionally pecking at me, and seizing the end of my finger in her bill and pulling and tugging at it ferociously. Just before I reached this last word she learned how she might outwit me. She sprang upon my writing wrist over the barricade, seized the pen, and held on. Again I put her out. Again she sprang over. This time when I evicted her, she sought to crawl in under my left hand, and now stands, with crest upraised in anger, by my right hand, apparently thinking over a new plan of campaign.

“A pencil attracts her somewhat in the same way, but after a few onslaughts upon the moving pencil she gives it up; but now the battle on the pen has lasted for quite a number of minutes, and though defeated at every turn, she comes back again and again.”

One day I got very cross with Fessor for writing so much, and I determined to hide from him. By this time I knew the “den” pretty well, and I had found, “way back” in the big box in the corner, where the piles of big envelopes and loose papers were, the cutest hiding-place in the world. It was a kind of tiny house formed by the piles of papers and I could just crawl into it through a narrow place, and then I had room to move around easily, and I knew no one could find me. So I slipped off from the desk on this particular day and dodged into the box and hid myself. Fessor didn’t see where I went, and pretty soon he began to wonder where I was, for he looked all around and went and peeked behind the desk and on the book stand and other places where I often “played hide,” but of course he couldn’t find me. I stood as still all the time as a bird knows how, and never let on that I knew he was seeking for me; and so, after a while, he gave up the search.

And I didn’t let him know where I had my hiding-place. He thought it was in that box, but he never did know. So it was great fun once in a while to slip away and hide, and then when I was hungry suddenly pop out (without his seeing me), run to his feet, chirp and call, and say: “Here’s Scraggles, as hungry as a hunter.” Then he would reach his hand down, lift me up to the desk, and pretend to scold me: “Where have you been, you naughty little bird? I’ve been hunting everywhere for you, and couldn’t find you!” But I wouldn’t let on. I’d just peek at him, first out of one eye and then out of the other, as much as to ask: “Don’t you wish you knew?”

Chapter VI

Preening my Feathers

I don’t know what it was that made Fessor laugh so when I tried to “spruce up” and make myself look as pretty as possible. Of course, I know full well that I was not a pretty bird. Perhaps I ought to tell you just exactly how I did look. Now you needn’t laugh and think I don’t know, for I do. I’ve seen myself in the mirror lots of times. Fessor and Edith used to take me and stand me before the glass, and while at first I thought it was another little bird, and I tried to talk to and play with it, I soon learned it was only a picture of myself. So, as I looked at myself quite often, I’ll tell you just how I did appear when I was three months old. My baby bill was gone and I looked more like a full-grown bird, but my feathers were still as scraggedy and raggedy as ever. My body and tail were a mousey-brown, with the wing feathers white and tipped with brown. My neck and breast were partially covered with soft, beautiful down of mouse color, and my head feathers were brown, with just one half-white feather in the centre which looked like a tiny crest. I was the smallest little bird ever seen, I guess,--I mean a sparrow,--and no more like the big, healthy, pert, and bouncing street sparrows than a delicate terrier is like a big bull-dog.

I was going to tell you about the way Fessor laughed when I tried to spruce up and preen my feathers. But I have found on his desk something he wrote, and I shall let you read it for yourselves. He doesn’t tell, though, how he used to sit there and laugh and laugh and laugh, until sometimes I almost thought he’d laugh his head off. And why he should laugh to see a tiny little bird like me make myself look nice, I don’t know. He used to spend time enough himself some days in making himself look neat. He’d put on his dress-suit and his pretty tie, and see that his boots were so finely polished, and all that kind of thing, so why should he laugh so at me?

This is what he wrote:

“Some days she will come and preen her feathers by my side as I write. It is her joy to sit on the very sheet upon which I am engaged, and for five or ten minutes such performances! With first one foot, then the other, she scratches her head with inconceivable rapidity. Then, getting a little oil from her receptacle, she begins to preen; under the left wing, down each feather, occasionally darting her bill like lightning upon some other feather that appears to her to need attention. Such screwing of the neck, twisting of the body, standing on tiptoes to get to the feathers on her body, such stretching to reach the tips! After it is done to her content, she gives herself several little shakes-down all over, quick flutterings and flappings of her wings, and settles down for awhile only to begin again and go through the whole performance once more if something suggests it ought to be done.”

Fessor also thought the way I stretched myself was very funny, though I could see nothing funny in it; so I will let you read what he wrote about that:

“To see her stretch one would think her tiny body was as full of sleep as that of a giant. First, one leg goes sprawling out as far as she can reach, and, with a spasmodic little kick, she brings it back into position, to push out the other. Then each wing in succession is stretched out, and sometimes, whether purposely or not I do not know, she lets the feathers comb through her claw.

“But the most interesting of her ‘stretchings’ comes when I put her on the window-sill and something goes on outside that she becomes interested in and wishes to see. She stretches up her little legs until it appears as if she were on stilts, and then, elongating her neck to more than twice its ordinary length, she veritably appears to be a tall bird with a long neck. Her excitement at such times is intense. She prances and cranes, and looks first out of one eye and then out of the other, hops back and forth, dances up and down, and generally shows a tremendous interest for so small a body.”

Chapter VII

Going Out of Doors