sking her to
let one of her boys spend his Christmas holidays in the country with
him.

"I want you to go, Carl," she said.

He was very much pleased, but looked sober when he thought of his pets.
"Laura and I will take care of them," said his mother, "and start the
new management of them."

"Very well," said Carl, "I will go then; I've no young ones now, so you
will not find them much trouble."

I thought it was a great deal of trouble to take care of them. The first
morning after Carl left, Billy, and Bella, and Davy, and I followed Miss
Laura upstairs. She made us sit in a row by the door, lest we should
startle the canaries. She had a great many things to do. First, the
canaries had their baths. They had to get them at the same time every
morning. Miss Laura filled the little white dishes with water and put
them in the cages, and then came and sat on a stool by the door. Bella,
and Billy, and Davy climbed into her lap, and I stood close by her. It
was so funny to watch those canaries. They put their heads on one side
and looked first at their little baths and then at us. They knew we were
strangers. Finally, as we were all very quiet, they got into the water;
and what a good time they had, fluttering their wings and splashing, and
cleaning themselves so nicely.

Then they got up on their perches and sat in the sun, shaking themselves
and picking at their feathers.

Miss Laura cleaned each cage, and gave each bird some mixed rape and
canary seed. I heard Carl tell her before he left not to give them much
hemp seed, for that was too fattening. He was very careful about their
food. During the summer I had often seen him taking up nice green things
to them: celery, chickweed, tender cabbage, peaches, apples, pears,
bananas; and now at Christmas time, he had green stuff growing in pots
on the window ledge.

Besides that he gave them crumbs of coarse bread, crackers, lumps of
sugar, cuttle-fish to peck at, and a number of other things. Miss Laura
did everything just as he told her; but I think she talked to the birds
more than he did. She was very particular about their drinking water,
and washed out the little glass cups that held it most carefully.

After the canaries were clean and comfortable, Miss Laura set their
cages in the sun, and turned to the goldfish. They were in large glass
globes on the window-seat. She took a long-handled tin cup, and dipped
out the fish from one into a basin of water. Then she w