More Tales of the Birds

We sat down on the bench by the front door, and Mrs. Reynardson, bonny and bright-eyed, came and gave me her hand and sat down with us. The farmer paused a bit to collect his thoughts, while he pensively tickled the newly-installed genius of the house with the sealing-waxed end of his long pipe. The genius seemed not unworthy of his venerable predecessor, for he showed no resentment, and settled himself down comfortably to hear the tale – or to roost.

“Now then. Once upon a time,” said I, to jog his memory.

But that dear old fellow never did things quite like other people; perhaps that was why I was so fond of him. He withdrew his pipe-stem from the cage, and patting the back of his wife’s hand with it in passing (an action I did not then understand), he pointed it in the direction of the hills which bounded our view.

“If you were to go up there,” he said, “just where you see the gap in the long line of trees, you would see below you, on the other side, a small village, and on beyond the village you’d see a bit of a hillock, with three big elms on it. And if you got near enough, I’ll be bound you’d see a magpie’s nest in the tallest tree to the right. There always was one, when I was a boy there, and there has always been one whenever I’ve happened to be over there since; and it was in that nest that my old Mag was born, and I was born within sight of it.

“Of course, we knew of it, we boys of the village, and we’d have been up there often, only that tree was a bad one to climb, as the magpie knew very well. Easy work when you got to the branches, but, unlike most elms, this one had fifteen feet of big broad stem before you reached them. None of us could get up that fifteen feet, though the bark was rough and we could get some hold with fingers and toes; sooner or later we were sure to come slipping down, and it was lucky for us that the grass was long and soft below.

“Well, when it’s a matter of fingers and toes, a girl is as good as a boy, if she has some strength and pluck, and it was a girl that showed me how to climb that tree. Nelly Green was her name; we were fast friends, she and I, and it was between us two that the solemn treaty and alliance – as the newspapers say – was concluded, by which we were to get possession of a young magpie. First it was agreed that when we had got our bird (we began at the wrong end, you see), I was to keep it, because Nelly’s mother would have no pets in the house. Secondly, she was to go no higher than the first branch, because girls were not fit to go worming themselves up to the tops of trees in petticoats. And then – let me see – she was to climb the bark first, because of her small hands and feet, and was to carry a rope round her waist, which she was to tie to a branch to help me in coming up after her. Fourthly, we were only to take one nestling, and to leave the others in peace.

“Nelly said that this treaty was to be written out and signed with hedgehog’s blood. Where she got the notion from I can’t tell, but no hedgehog turned up in time, and we were neither of us too fond of writing, so we let that plan drop.”

“What a dreadful tomboy she must have been, John!” said Mrs. Reynardson.

“Well, I won’t say she wasn’t a bit of one,” said the farmer, with a twinkle in his eye; “but she turned out none so badly – none so badly, as you shall hear, my dear.”

“We knew very well, of course, how the magpies were getting on, and when the eggs were hatched; and a few days after that, we got our rope and reached the hillock by a roundabout way, not to attract notice. Nelly had been studying the bark of that tree for many a day, though I never would let her go up lest she should come to grief coming down again. Up she went just like a creep-mouse, got a good seat on the branch and tied the rope round it. Then up I went too, hand over hand, and in five minutes more I was at the nest; a huge bit of building it was, roofed all over with sticks. The old birds flew round screaming, but I put one young bird in my pocket, and came down safely to where Nelly was sitting. Then the bird was put into her pocket, and she let herself down by the rope; and lastly I untied the rope (for it would never have done to have left it there), and wondered how I was to come down.

“At last I resolved on climbing out on my stomach to the very end of the branch, where I could bear it down with my weight, and then dropping. But my weight was too little to pull the big branch down far, and as I came to the ground, I sprained my ankle badly.

“However, there was the bird all safe, and that was the great thing. Nelly helped me home, and Mag was put into a wicker cage we had ready for him. Of course we got scolded, but I was in too great pain to mind, and Nelly was used to it from her mother, so we got off pretty well.

“Of course, too, I couldn’t go to school, and Mag was my companion all day long. He had a tremendous appetite, and it was as much as I could do to find food for him. If I let him out of his cage he would follow me about, opening his bill and crying for food; and at night he slept outside my bedroom window. I had never had a pet before, and I got to love that bird better than anything in the world, except Nelly; and, indeed, I’m not sure that Nelly was not a bit jealous of him those few weeks.”

“I should have been,” said Mrs. Reynardson.

“Of course you would, my dear,” said her husband. “Men were deceivers ever, as they say; and boys too. But Mag was to be Nelly’s property as much as mine, by that treaty of alliance, for ever and ever; and that treaty was never broken. But I must go on.

“When my ankle was getting well, there came a neat maidservant to the cottage one day, and said that Miss Pringle wished to see me at six o’clock precisely; and wondering what she could want with me, I made myself uncomfortable in my best clothes and limped up the village to her back door. I was shown into a very neat parlour, where Miss Pringle sat in a stiff chair knitting.

“She was the old maid of our village, and when I’ve told you that, you know a good bit about her. She was a tightish sort of an old maid – tight in the lips, and tight in her dress, and tight, so they said, in her purse-strings too; but you shall form your own opinion of that presently. She had neat curls on each side of her head, and a neat thin nose, rather large, and she sat a bit forward and looked at you as if she’d found a speck of dirt on you somewhere. I always felt as if I had a smut on my nose when Miss Pringle was speaking to me.

“‘Come in, John Reynardson,’ says she. ‘You may stand on that bit of matting by the door. What is the matter with your foot?’

“‘Sprained my ankle, ma’am, climbing a tree with Nelly Green.’

“‘With Nelly Green?’ says Miss Pringle. ‘Then Nelly Green ought to be ashamed of herself! Boys may be monkeys if they like, but not girls. Tell Nelly Green I’m ashamed of her!’”

“Did she say that?” asked Mrs. Reynardson.

“She did, and she never liked Nelly Green too much after that. She asked me several times afterwards if that monkey-girl was ashamed of herself.” Here the farmer stopped a minute to laugh. “And I always told her she wasn’t. No more she was – not a bit!

“Well, she told me frankly that she didn’t like boys – and that was very kind of her! – but I could have told her so myself as soon as ever I was put on the matting and had my face looked at for smuts. Miss Pringle was not one of that soft kind of single ladies who think all boys angels – not she! But, bless her old soul! the Jackdaw, as Nelly and I used to call her, because of her grey head and her black dress and her pecking way – the Jackdaw was nearly as lucky a bird for me as the magpie – in the long run, that is.

“She told me she wanted a boy to look after her pony and carriage, and as I was recommended by the Vicar, and was strong and active, she would offer me the place. But I wasn’t to climb trees, and I wasn’t to spin halfpence, and I wasn’t to do this, and I wasn’t to do that, and lastly, I wasn’t to keep animals about the house. ‘Mind,’ she said, shaking her nose and her forefinger at the same time, ‘I allow no pet animals about this house, so if you take my offer you must give up your rabbits.’

“‘Yes, ma’am,’ says I, though I hadn’t any; but her nose was so tight when she said that, that I knew I had better hold my tongue.

“Then she took me through her garden, making me pull up some weeds by the way, and lay them neatly in a heap in a corner, with a spadeful of ashes on them to keep the seeds from flying; and so to her little stable, where she showed me the pony and harness, and a little whitewashed room upstairs where I was to sleep. It was as neat as herself, and over the bed was a large piece of cardboard with three words on it – ‘Tidiness, Punctuality, Obedience.’ Very good words for a lad just beginning to serve the Queen,” added the farmer, “and very good they were for me too; but if I’d stuck hard to them all three I shouldn’t be here now, as you shall hear.

“So I said very humbly that I was very thankful to take the place, if my parents agreed; and when I got home they were very thankful too. And then I went off to find Nelly, and hold a council of war about poor Mag.

“We went up to the hillock and the three elms to be out of the way. Nelly cried a bit when she heard that our climbing days were over, and that I was to be what she called slave to a Jackdaw; but she dried her eyes on her frock on my telling her that she should come and see the pony when the Jackdaw was off her perch; and then we had our council of war. I told her exactly what Miss Pringle had said – that she allowed no pets about the house. Nelly’s mother was just as bad, and no one at my home could be trusted to feed a young bird regularly; so we were rather beaten, and I was for giving Mag his liberty.

“Nelly gave her hair a toss over her face, and sat down on the wet grass to think for a minute. Then she tossed it back again, looked up, and said, ‘Johnny, you old noodle, the stable isn’t the house, is it now?’

“She was a sharp one, you see – always was, and always has been. Men are a bit half-hearted and shy-like; but it’s the women that know how to find a hole in your hedge, and make a good broad gap for us to jump through.”

“Do you know Nelly Green still, Mr. Reynardson?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, my boy, I know her,” he answered; “and she’s not grown blunt yet. Well, she it was that decided that, after waiting a week to see if the Jackdaw would come poking about the stable or not, she should bring Mag to me there, if all went well, and see the pony too; and in the meantime she was to go twice a day to our cottage and feed him. And when she had made the hole in the hedge, I jumped through, and never minded a prick or two I got – meaning in my conscience, you know – from the brambles.

“All did go well; Miss Pringle – I really don’t like calling her the Jackdaw now she’s dead and gone – soon found I was handy, and as she disliked the smell of stables, she gave up pecking round there after the first day or two. So Nelly brought round Mag by the back way through the fields, and I hung up his cage in the hayloft, by the window looking away from the house and garden.

“And now my story really begins,” he went on; “and I’d be glad if you’d give me a flick with the whip now and again, for I’m as bad as my old mare at a jog-trot.

“I settled down into my place with a good heart, and soon got fond of the pony. Mag, up in the hayloft, escaped Miss Pringle’s notice, and though the cook found him out, she was a good-natured body and held her tongue. Nelly paid me many visits, stealing round to my stable by the fields; and she made the gap in our hedge so much bigger that once, in the Jackdaw’s absence, both she and Mag had a ride on the pony in the paddock.

“Mag grew to be nearly a year old, and the cleverest bird you ever saw; I had hard work to keep him in his wicker cage, for he was always pulling away at the door-fastening with his bill. One warm morning in spring I was sent for to take Miss Pringle’s orders, and found her sitting at her desk in her parlour, with the window open, and the garden scents coming into the room. I stood on the matting as usual while she wrote a note. She then gave it to me, and told me to take it to a village three miles away, but first to get the carriage ready, as she was going for a drive, and should be away all the morning. She was very gracious, and less tight about the lips than usual, I fancied.

“‘If I am not back after your dinner, John,’ she said, ‘come and tidy up this bed under the window, for I shall have to sow my annuals soon.’

“I got the pony ready, and off she went, holding the reins and whip as if ponies were almost as unruly animals as boys. Then I started for my walk, delivered the note, and turned homewards by a field-path to try for a look at the hounds, for they had met that day near our village. I missed them, however; but on getting over a stile I saw a gentleman in scarlet trying to catch his horse. He had been thrown, and his horse was having a fine time of it; grazing quietly till his master was within a yard or two of him, and then throwing up his heels and scampering off. Of course I joined in the chase, for I was pretty well used to these tricks from our pony; and the gentleman, who was out of breath, sat down and watched me. It was a long job, but at last I pinned him in a corner, and brought him, well pleased, to his master, who praised me kindly, and put his hand in his pocket as he mounted.

“He had only a sovereign, which seemed to puzzle him. First he put it back again, and was beginning to tell me to ‘come over to his place and I should have half-a-crown.’

“‘But it’s far,’ he said, ‘and I’m off to London to-night. I can trust you, can’t I?’ he added, turning a pair of very pleasant blue eyes on me. ‘Whom do you work for?’

“‘Miss Pringle at Cotteswell,’ I answered, touching my hat.

“‘Very well,’ he said; ‘you take the sovereign and get it changed, and I’ll send my groom over for the change to-morrow.’

“I thought he might have sent the groom over with the half-crown; but I fancy he liked trusting me, and thought he might forget to send the groom, as in fact he did.

“He was off before I could get any words out; so home I went, thinking I should like to be his groom, such a pleasant way he had about him. On my way I passed the village shop, where I got the change, which I put safely away in a drawer with my ties and collars. Miss Pringle had not come back, nor did she come till the afternoon. I had my dinner, and saved a bit as usual to give Mag when my day’s work should be over. Then I worked in the garden, and tidied up the bed under the window. When she returned I had a good long job with the pony and carriage; and before it was over I was sent for suddenly into the house. The maid who fetched me was crying.

“In the parlour Miss Pringle was again at her desk, with her bonnet on, looking very tight and stiff indeed; the cook was wiping her eyes with her apron, and on my matting was standing a policeman, who moved me on to the front of Miss Pringle by the window, and then retired to the door.

“‘John,’ she said, very distinctly and slowly, ‘I have missed a sovereign, which I accidentally left on this desk this morning. Do you know anything of it? You have been at work outside. The other servants know nothing of it, and they and their rooms have been searched.’

“I was dreadfully taken aback, but I denied all knowledge.

“‘Policeman, search him,’ said Miss Pringle, shaking her curls sadly.

“The policeman turned my pockets out, but only found a small curtain-ring, with which I had been betrothed to Nelly a day or two before. (She had another like it; we couldn’t wear them on our fingers, so we kept them always in our pockets.)

“‘Cook, take the policeman to search his room,’ said Miss Pringle, with another shake.

“Cook and policeman went down the garden. Miss Pringle locked the door and pocketed the key. ‘I don’t accuse you,’ she said, ‘but I must take precautions.’

“It was now that I first thought of the money in my drawer. I turned hot all over, and felt my head swimming.

“‘Please, ma’am,’ I stammered, ‘there’s money in my room, but I was given it by a – ’

“‘Don’t incriminate yourself,’ said she, coldly and precisely; ‘there are no witnesses present. Silence.’

“The cook and policeman came up the garden; I can hear their footsteps on the gravel now, and the ticking of Miss Pringle’s neat-faced clock. It was half-past four by that clock, I remember – my tea-time, and the time when I usually fed Mag. The thought rushed into my head, if I am taken up what will Mag do? How am I to tell Nelly?

“They knocked at the door, which Miss Pringle unlocked. The policeman put the money he had found on the desk in front of her, and put his hand on my shoulder. The cook sobbed, the clock ticked; no one said anything; Miss Pringle looked away from me, and I really think she was sorry.

“At last she looked up and opened her tight lips, but what she was going to say I never knew, for at that moment I made a bolt through the window, upsetting the neat geraniums in their pots, and tumbling headlong into the flower-bed which I had tidied in the morning, I scudded down the garden into the yard, over the gate into the paddock, through the hedge, and away at full speed in the direction of Nelly’s cottage.

“I can recollect all quite clearly now, up to the moment when I saw the policeman running after me and gaining ground while I struggled through a hedge. Then I got wild and heated, I suppose, and I remember nothing more distinctly. But Nelly says that I came rushing into their garden, shouting to her, ‘Look after Mag,’ for the police were after me for stealing. She thought at first I was at one of my games, and told me to run off and climb up a tree, and she would bring me food; and I was just going off towards the three elms when the policeman ran in and collared me, and then she fought him and called him names till her mother came out and dragged her away. This is what she told me months afterwards.

“That was the last I saw of Nelly for a long, long time. I was locked up, and the magistrates made short work of me. Of course they laughed at my story of the sovereign and the gentleman, for I neither knew his name nor where he lived. All went against me; the shopkeeper proved that I had changed a sovereign, Miss Pringle proved she had left one on her desk, the housemaid proved that I had been gardening at the window, the cook that the money was found in my drawer, and the policeman that I had run away; and that groom never came for the change. The parson gave me a good character, and Miss Pringle asked them to be merciful. How could she help it, poor soul? She really had begun to like me, I believe, but I spoilt it all by telling her that I wanted no mercy from her, as she believed I was a liar. So they sentenced me to be imprisoned for a fortnight, and then to be sent for three years to the Reformatory School which had lately been opened in the county.

“The gaol I didn’t mind so much, though it was bad enough, but that school took all the spirit out of me. There’s no need for me to tell you what I went through there, the washings and scrubbings, the school dress – a badge of disgrace; the having to obey orders sharp, or get sharp punishment; the feeling that all the boys thought me a thief like themselves, and up to all their low ways and talk; and then the bad things I heard, the sense of injustice rankling in my heart, and making me hate every one. I think I should have soon become as bad as any young thief in the place, but for the thought of Nelly and Mag, and even they were beginning to be less in my thoughts, and I was beginning to get hammered down by hard work and punishment into an ordinary dogged young sinner, when something happened which brought the old life into me again, like a shower of rain on a crop in August.

“One day, when I was working at the bottom of the big school field, with a squad of young criminals, under the eye of a task-master, I heard from the other side of the thick hedge the note of a yellow-hammer. Yes, it was the yellow-hammer’s song, ‘a little bit of bread and no che-e-se;’ but I knew in an instant that it was not the voice of a bird, and I knew of only one human creature who could whistle the song so exactly. It was the signal by which Nelly used to make me aware of her arrival, when she came over the fields to see me and Mag at Miss Pringle’s.

“My heart, as they say, nearly jumped into my mouth. I can’t describe to you how it was; I only know that I went on digging with my eyes full of tears – for of course the first fancy that Nelly was really there, fled away almost at once, and left me feeling as if I had had a dream. But then it came again, twice over, and louder, not twenty yards away from me.

“The dream was gone now, and I edged myself down as near as I could to the hedge, keeping my eye on the master. Luckily for me at this moment one young rascal contrived to dig his spade into another’s heel, and got a blow in the face for his pains; and the master was down on the boy that hit him, and marched him off to the house for punishment. I seized the chance, and was at the hedge in a moment, carrying an armful of weeds to throw away in the ditch, so as not to attract the notice of the others. Sure enough there was my own dear old Nelly’s face peering up through a tiny opening which some rabbit had made in coming to feed on our cabbages.

“‘Johnny,’ she whispered, ‘give me a kiss.’

“I scrambled into the hedge and gave her half-a-dozen; but I couldn’t speak; I was far away in a dream again. Nelly, however, was wide awake and knew the value of her time.

“‘I’m staying with Uncle Jonas, in the white cottage next to the turnpike. It’s not a mile away. And look here, Johnny, Mag’s there too. He’s all safe; I’ve put a bit of wire on his door-fastening ever since you were taken up. Do you know, it was open when I took him away that day, but there he was all safe, and I’ve taken such care of him for your sake. We talk about you a great deal, Mag and I do. And, Johnny, you come down and see him. Uncle Jonas says you’re to run away. You’re innocent, you know, so it doesn’t matter. I’ve arranged it all, clothes and everything. We’ll go to America till it’s all blown over, and then – ’

“‘Reynardson, down there, what are you doing?’ calls out the master, as he came back to look after his charges. And Nelly’s head slipped away in an instant, leaving, in the hurry, as I noticed, a wisp of her brown hair sticking on a thorn; which, by the way, I managed to secure later in the day, and put away in my trousers pocket for want of a safer place.

“I suppose it was from her Uncle Jonas that Nelly got this notion of America, and waiting there ‘till it’s all blown over.’ Anyhow, Uncle Jonas, like many of the neighbours of the new Reformatory, were on the side of us boys, and aided and abetted Nelly in her scheme for getting me away. He never thought, poor man, he was laying himself open to the law. And that good uncle would have got himself into a serious scrape if things had turned out as they ought to have done, for I contrived to slip away from the school the very next day, and was hidden in the white cottage all that night.

“I had got quite reckless; for, as Nelly said, when one is innocent, what does it matter? And she was so exactly her old self, and took such care of me – burying my school dress in the garden, and rigging me out in some old things of her uncle’s, and laughing at me in my big coat that I soon felt my pluck coming back again, though I cried a good deal at first, from fright as much as joy. And Mag, too, was exactly his old self, and was not a bit ashamed of me; it was some one else he ought to be ashamed of, as you shall soon hear.

“Our good time was soon over. It was the turnpike-keeper who did the mischief. He had seen me come down to the cottage, and he couldn’t resist the reward they offered early next morning to any one who caught me. He sent up a message to the school, and at nine o’clock the master and two policemen walked into the house. Nelly didn’t try to fight this time, but she spoke up and told them it was all her doing and neither mine nor Uncle Jonas’s. She told them that she had brought Mag to see me all the way from home, and that she was sure I wouldn’t run away any more if I might have Mag with me there.

“It was well for me that my wonderful Nelly kept her senses and could use her tongue, for my luck began to turn from that time forwards. The sergeant of police patted her on the head, and took Mag’s cage himself; and the other policeman put into his pocket the handcuffs he had begun to fasten on my wrists, saying they were ‘too big for such a kid;’ and even the master said that though I was in a bad scrape, he would speak for me to the magistrates.