feelings, and neither hurt each other nor be rude to one another.
Right in the centre of the square room is a fountain playing, the spray falling down upon a charming little rockery in the middle of a stone basin. The fountain can be turned on at the will of the owner, and whenever it plays the birds take advantage of it, and fly across and across through the spray, and so enjoy a shower bath. But the white rats do not care for a bath, and when the birds, thoroughly wet and thoroughly tired of the sport, sit down on a perch to preen their draggled feathers, the cosy white rats in their garments of ermine look up at them with crimson eyes, in which dwells a kind of pity, and seem to say, “We really wouldn’t be you for all the world.”
What other pets are there in this happy family, did you ask? Well, there are pet pigmy pigeons, and pet kittens, a tame duck, who is greatly bullied, a sea-gull who talks like a Christian, half-a-dozen starlings, who inquire into everything, and a jackdaw who is never out of mischief, and whom Effie has serious thoughts of sending into exile.
As soon as Leonard and she appear they are surrounded, and the din is for a time indescribable. The dwarf or pigmy pigeons hover round them and alight on their shoulders and hands; the kittens chase the rats, who squeak, and pretend to be terribly afraid; the sea-gull struts about crying, “Oh! you pretty, pretty, pretties;” the jackdaw whistles “Duncan Grey;” all the starlings start singing at once; and the idiotic duck can’t think of anything better to do than stand flapping his wings in a corner and crying, “What, what, what, what!”
We tear ourselves away from this happy family at last, and make tracks for the bird rooms, or aviaries. One room is devoted to British, the other to foreign birds, all nicely assorted and sized, so that they live in the utmost unison. There are soft-billed birds and hard-billed birds, so there are both seeds and mash to suit their palates. Here again we have fountains, one in each aviary, and these, when playing, are a source of never-ending delight.
When the sun is shining upon the foreign aviary, what a sight it is to see those birds, in all their brilliancy of colour and beauty, flitting from bough to bough in their bonnie home; but if you want music you must enter the adjoining room, where the birds of Britain dwell. Gaudy their plumage may not be but, oh! their voices are very sweet.
All round both these rooms grow trailing plants, that hang over the aviaries like great green plumes, and when night falls and the Chinese lanterns are lit, and the fountains all playing, the whole place is indeed like a fairy palace.
But it is summer on the occasion of this visit of ours, the grass is green, and flowers are everywhere out of doors, in beds and rockeries, peeping through the moss, hiding under trees, and covering every porch and verandah with masses of foliage and lovely flowers.
Book One – Chapter Four
Gipsy Life
“Calmly the happy days flew on,
Unnumbered in their flight.”
“Moon the shroud shall lap thee fast,
And the sleep be on thee cast,
That shall ne’er know waking.
Haste thee, haste thee to be gone!
Earth flits fast, and time draws on —
Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan,
Day is near the breaking.”
Scene: The ante-room of the fairy palace, Effie reading, Leonard listening. Don Caesar de Bazan and Lady Purr-a-Meow all attention.
Man never is but always to be blest. The delightful and happy life our Leonard and Effie had lived all the long sweet summer through could surely – one would think – have left nothing to be desired.
Both were little naturalists in their way, though they did not know it; both were poets also, though they wrote no verses, for their hearts were attuned to the music of the wild woods, the song of birds, the rippling laughter of the rill, the whisper of the low wind through the trees, or even the dash of the cataract and roar of the storm. No beetle or other insect was there, in all the romantic country through which they passed on their way to and from school, that they did not know all about; every wild flower was a friend; and the little furry denizens of the forest, that dwelt in old tree stumps, or had their cosy nests among the verdant moss or the beds of pine-needles – all knew them, and never fled at their approach.
Curious children both were, for they cared but little for company in their rambles; they were indeed all in all to each other. And even though they knew well that a welcome-home awaited them every day, they made no great hurry, and hardly ever went back from school without a bagful of delicacies for their pets in the fairy palace – green food and seeds for the birds, worms and dead mice or dead birds for the owl, and nuts for all who cared for them.
They ought to have been very happy, and so they were, yet Leonard was continually planning strange adventures.
The kind of books they read had much to do with the formation of the boy’s character, as they have on the minds of all boys. But in those good old times there were fewer writers for the young than we have now, so poetry was more in fashion, and books of travel and weird tales of ghost and goblin, and old, old, strange stories of romance.
Sometimes Effie read while Leonard listened, but just as often it was the other way.
“I tell you what I should like to have,” said Leonard, one day, throwing down his book. “What do you think, Effie?”
“Oh! I could never guess. Perhaps a balloon.”
“N-no,” said Leonard, thoughtfully; “some day we might perhaps get a balloon, and fly away in it, and see all those beautiful countries that we read of, but that isn’t it. Guess again.”
“A large, large eagle, like what Sinbad the Sailor had, to carry us away, and away, and away through the skies and over the clouds and the sea.”
“No, you’re not right yet. Guess again.”
“A real live fairy, who would strike on the black rock where they say all the treasure is buried, and open up a door and take us down into the caves of gold and gems and everything beautiful.”
“No,” said Leonard. “I see you can’t get at it.”
“Well, tell me.”
“Why, a real gipsy-waggon to wander away in, when summer days are fine, and see strange people and strange places.”
“And tell fortunes, Leonie?”
“Well, we might do that, you know.”
“Ah! but summer isn’t anywhere near yet; the chrysanthemums have only just begun to blow. Then we couldn’t go far away, because poor papa and mamma would miss us quite a deal, and who would feed our pets?”
“Why, Peter, to be sure. He does more than half now. And although winter will come soon, summer will return, Eff, and the woods grow green again, and the birds begin to sing once more, and the streams be clear as crystal, instead of brown as they now are.”
“Well,” said Effie, “it is worth thinking about. Would Don do?”
Don was the donkey.
“Yes, I think Don would do first-rate. I’m sure he wouldn’t run off.”
Effie laughed at
