ed
to wildness and a desire to escape, and I was allowed to suffer on.

"That bird is the most annoying, restless thing I ever saw," complained
Betty's mother one evening when I was thus trying to tell them my cup
was empty. "It spends all its time poking its head through the wires
or thrashing around in the cage, instead of getting up on its perch and
behaving itself quietly as a decent bird should."

"Do you reckon it's sick?" suggested Betty, and she came to my cage and
looked at me attentively.

"Reckon it's hungry, you mean," growled her father, who was in one
corner of the kitchen cleaning his gun.

"She never feeds it any more," commented the mother. "What's the use
of keeping it? I'd wring its neck and be done with it. Betty don't
keer a straw for it."

"Yes, I do," cried the little girl. "I'll get it something to eat this
very minute."

These spasms of attention only lasted a day or two, however, when my
young keeper would lapse into carelessness, and again I would be
allowed to go with an empty crop and a dry throat. My beautiful
plumage grew rusty from this irregularity and continual neglect, and
although I am not a vain bird, my dingy appearance was a source of
daily grief and mortification to me. When Betty was not too busy
playing she sometimes hung my cage outside the door of the cottage, but
often for days together through the pleasant summer I was left hanging
in the kitchen, sometimes half-choked with smoke or dampened with
steam. No wonder I drooped and ceased my cheerful song.

The days when I was put out of doors were indeed gala days to me. Many
families of young chickens lived in the back yard, and the pipings of
the little ones and the scoldings of the mothers when their children
ran too far away from them, were always amusing to listen to and gave
me something to think about which kept my mind off my own troubles.

I liked to watch the hens with their fuzzy broods tumbling about them,
or with the older chicks when they scratched the ground and ceaselessly
clucked for them to come to get their share of what was turned up in
the soil; meanwhile they kept a sharp lookout with their bright eyes to
see that no outsider shared in the feast. And how angrily did they
drive it away should a chick from another brood heedlessly rush in
among them to get a taste.

One old hen in particular interested me very much. I noticed her first
because of her pretty bluish color and the dark mark