The Little White Bird | Page 9

perambulator under the
trees and watch from a distance, you will see the birds boarding it and
hopping about from pillow to blanket in a twitter of excitement; they
are trying to find out how babyhood would suit them.
Quite the prettiest sight in the Gardens is when the babies stray from
the tree where the nurse is sitting and are seen feeding the birds, not a
grownup near them. It is first a bit to me and then a bit to you, and all
the time such a jabbering and laughing from both sides of the railing.
They are comparing notes and inquiring for old friends, and so on; but
what they say I cannot determine, for when I approach they all fly
away.
The first time I ever saw David was on the sward behind the Baby's
Walk. He was a missel-thrush, attracted thither that hot day by a hose
which lay on the ground sending forth a gay trickle of water, and David
was on his back in the water, kicking up his legs. He used to enjoy
being told of this, having forgotten all about it, and gradually it all
came back to him, with a number of other incidents that had escaped
my memory, though I remember that he was eventually caught by the
leg with a long string and a cunning arrangement of twigs near the
Round Pond. He never tires of this story, but I notice that it is now he
who tells it to me rather than I to him, and when we come to the string
he rubs his little leg as if it still smarted.
So when David saw his chance of being a missel-thrush again he called
out to me quickly: "Don't drop the letter!" and there were tree-tops in
his eyes.
"Think of your mother," I said severely.
He said he would often fly in to see her. The first thing he would do
would be to hug her. No, he would alight on the water- jug first, and
have a drink.
"Tell her, father," he said with horrid heartlessness, "always to have
plenty of water in it, 'cos if I had to lean down too far I might fall in
and be drownded."

"Am I not to drop the letter, David? Think of your poor mother without
her boy!"
It affected him, but he bore up. When she was asleep, he said, he would
hop on to the frilly things of her night-gown and peck at her mouth.
"And then she would wake up, David, and find that she had only a bird
instead of a boy."
This shock to Mary was more than he could endure. "You can drop it,"
he said with a sigh. So I dropped the letter, as I think I have already
mentioned; and that is how it all began.
III
Her Marriage, Her Clothes, Her Appetite, and an Inventory of Her
Furniture
A week or two after I dropped the letter I was in a hansom on my way
to certain barracks when loud above the city's roar I heard that accursed
haw-haw-haw, and there they were, the two of them, just coming out of
a shop where you may obtain pianos on the hire system. I had the
merest glimpse of them, but there was an extraordinary rapture on her
face, and his head was thrown proudly back, and all because they had
been ordering a piano on the hire system.
So they were to be married directly. It was all rather contemptible, but I
passed on tolerantly, for it is only when she is unhappy that this woman
disturbs me, owing to a clever way she has at such times of looking
more fragile than she really is.
When next I saw them, they were gazing greedily into the window of
the sixpenny-halfpenny shop, which is one of the most deliciously
dramatic spots in London. Mary was taking notes feverishly on a slip of
paper while he did the adding up, and in the end they went away
gloomily without buying anything. I was in high feather. "Match
abandoned, ma'am," I said to myself; "outlook hopeless; another visit to
the Governesses' Agency inevitable; can't marry for want of a kitchen

shovel." But I was imperfectly acquainted with the lady.
A few days afterward I found myself walking behind her. There is
something artful about her skirts by which I always know her, though I
can't say what it is. She was carrying an enormous parcel that might
have been a bird-cage wrapped in brown paper, and she took it into a
bric-a-brac shop and came out without it. She then ran rather than
walked in the direction of the sixpenny- halfpenny shop. Now mystery
of any kind is detestable to me,