n't anything the
matter with birdie. Oh, dear Lucy, _don't_ say it is."

Her voice somehow, as Lucy said afterwards, sounded like that of a
grown-up person--all the babyishness seemed to have gone out of it--she
did not cry, she stood there white as a sheet, clasping her hands in a
way that went to Lucy's heart.

"Oh, Miss Hoodie," she replied, the tears running down her face, for she
was very tender-hearted, "oh dear, Miss Hoodie, don't take on so. I hope
birdie's not badly hurt. The cat didn't touch him. It knocked over the
cage, and it must have been the fall; but _perhaps_ he's more frightened
than hurt."

"Give him to me, Lucy," said Hoodie. "Let me hold him in my own hands.
Oh, birdie dear, oh, birdie darling, don't you know me?" for birdie lay
still and limp--almost as if dead already. Hoodie, forcing back the
tears, whistled her usual call to him, and as its sound reached his
ears, birdie seemed to quiver, raised his head, feebly flapped his
wings, and tried, with a piteous attempt at shaking off the sleep from
which he would never again awake, tried to rouse himself and to struggle
to his feet.

"Oh, Lucy," cried Hoodie, "he's getting better," but as she said the
words, birdie fell over on his side, uttered the feeblest of chirps, and
with a little quiver lay still--quite still--he was dead. The fright had
killed him.

Hoodie looked up in Lucy's face with tearless eyes.

"Is he dead?" she said.

"Yes, Miss Hoodie dear," said Lucy, softly stroking the ruffled
feathers, "he is dead, but oh dear, Miss Hoodie, it isn't so bad as if
the cat had torn and scratched him all over. You should think of that."

But Hoodie could think of nothing in the shape of comfort. She held the
little dead bird out to Lucy.

"Take him and bury him," she said. "He can't love me any more, so take
him away. All the loving's dead. He was the only thing that loved me. I
won't try to be good any more. God is very unkind."

"Miss Hoodie!" exclaimed Lucy, considerably shocked. But Hoodie just
looked at her with a hard set expression in her white face.

"You don't understand," she said. "Take him away and bury him."

She turned to the door and left the room. She went slowly back to her
own room, and got into her little bed again. Then, like the old Hebrew
king, poor little English Hoodie "turned her face to the wall," and wept
and wept as if never again there could be for her brightness in the
sunshine, or love and happiness in l