and she began, after her own odd fashion, to talk to the Martins in a dreamy way.
“What busy people you are!” she said, very softly, so as not to disturb them: “how tired you must get, fussing about like that all day long! Fancy if my mother had to run round the garden twenty times before giving me anything to eat! That would be more in Aunt Charlotte’s way, wouldn’t it? I won’t get the boiling water today, – or at least I’ll spill it. You look very happy, gossiping away all day, with a nest full of young to look after; anyhow it’s lucky for you that you can’t be caught, and have boiling water poured on you. She’d do it if she could, though. Yes, you are certainly very happy; you don’t come back to your nest and find it locked up like my tool-house. How you do skim about, like fish swimming in the air! And how nice and clean you are! – though I did see you grubbing in the mud the other day on the road. I say, I should like to be you instead of me, with all sorts of things to worry me.”
At this moment a Martin stopped to rest on a bare twig of the apple-tree which grew close to the house and almost touched it; and at once fell to ruffling up its feathers, and pecked at them with great energy.
“What are you doing that for?” asked Gwenny, watching in a lazy way, with her eyes half closed.
The Martin seemed to take no notice, but clinging to his twig with some difficulty against the rising breeze (for his feet were not much used to perching) he went on diligently searching his feathers with his bill.
“What are you doing that for?” asked Gwenny again, rousing herself. And recollecting her manners, she added, “If you will be kind enough to tell me, I should really like to know, because, you see, I’m interested in all the animals in our garden.”
“That’s easily answered,” said the Martin: “it’s only because these things I’m pecking at tease me so.”
“Tease you!” cried Gwenny. “Why, I was just thinking that you had nothing in the world to tease you. I’m sure you look as happy as the day is long. I have so many little things to worry me, you see!”
“Dear little Gwenny!” said the Martin, after a pause, “so you have your troubles too! Do you know, I’ve seen you here every summer since you were hardly big enough to toddle about the garden, and I should have thought you were the happiest little girl in the world.”
Gwenny shook her head sadly; and indeed at that moment she heard the latch of the gate lifted. But it was only the postman, and there was no sign yet of Aunt Charlotte. The Martin went on:
“And do you really think that a House Martin has not troubles? Why, dear me, to think only of these ticks! There are half a dozen in each feather, I really believe; and if you had to count my feathers, it would be your bedtime long before you got through half of them. I could sit here by the hour together hunting for them, if I hadn’t plenty of other work to do. You can’t think how they fidget one, tickling and creeping all day long! And the nest up there is swarming with them! Have you got ticks under your feathers, I wonder?”
“Don’t talk of such horrid things,” said Gwenny. “Of course I haven’t. Please don’t fly down: you might drop some about. I had no idea you were such nasty creatures!”
“Speak gently, please,” returned the Martin. “It’s not our fault. They will come, and there’s not a Martin in the world that hasn’t got them. You see we have our troubles; and you are a very lucky little girl. You have no ticks, and no journeys to make, and no droughts to go through, and no sparrows to bully you, and no men or cats to catch and kill you. Dear me,” he added with a sigh, “such a spring and summer as my wife and I have had! Troubles on troubles, worries on worries – and, depend upon it, we haven’t seen the end of it yet. But it’s no good talking about it. When one is worried the best thing is to be as busy as possible. So I had better say goodbye and get to work again.” And he fluttered off his perch.
“No, don’t go,” said Gwenny. “Tell me all about it; I’m sure it’ll do you good. I always go and tell some one when I get into trouble.”
So the Martin began, while Gwenny arranged herself comfortably as for a story, while the breeze blew the brown locks all about her face.
“The wonder is,” he said, “that I am here at all. Every year it seems more astonishing, for half the Martins that nested in the village in my first summer are dead and gone. And indeed our numbers are less than they used to be; we have to face so many troubles and perils. When we left Africa last spring – ”
“Why did you leave it?” asked Gwenny. “If you will make such terribly long journeys, (and I know you do, for father told us) why do you ever come back? Of course we’re very glad to see you here,” she added, with an air of politeness caught from her mother, “but it seems to me that you are very odd in your ways.”
The Martin paused for a moment. “I really don’t quite know,” he presently said; “I never thought about it: we always do come here, and our ancestors always came, so I suppose we shall go on doing it. Besides, this is really our home. We were born here, you see, and when the heat begins in South Africa there comes a strange feeling in our hearts, a terrible homesickness, and we must go.”
“Then when you are once at home, why do you leave it to go away again so far?” asked Gwenny.
“My dear,” said the Martin, “if you will listen, and not ask so many questions beginning with ‘why,’ you may possibly learn something about it. Let me begin again. When we left Africa this year we went our usual way by some big islands in a broad blue sea, where we can rest, you know, and stay a day or two to recruit ourselves, – and then we made another sea-passage, and came to land near a large and beautiful town, with great numbers of ships lying in its harbour. Of course we are not afraid of towns or men: we have always found men kind to us, and willing to let us build our nests on their houses. Long ago, you know, we used to build in rocks, and so we do now in some places; but when you began to build houses of stone we took to them very soon, for then there was plenty of room for all of us, and no one to persecute us either, as the hawks used to do in the rocky hills. But really I begin to fear we shall be obliged to give it up again one of these days.”
“Why?” said Gwenny. “Don’t think of such a thing, now we’re friends. Why should you?”
“If you want to know why,” continued the Martin, “you must wait a little till I get on with my story. When we reached that fine town with the ships, we rested, as we always do, on any convenient place we can find, – chimneys, towers, telegraph wires; and of course as we come in thousands and much about the same time, the people look out for us, and welcome us. So they used to, at least: but of late years something has possessed them, – I don’t know what, – and they have set themselves to catch and kill us. It may be only a few wicked persons: but this year nearly all those towers and wires were smeared with some dreadful sticky stuff, which held us fast when we settled on it, until rough men came along and seized us. Hundreds and thousands of us were caught in this way and cruelly killed, and will never see their old home again.”
“Horrible!” cried Gwenny. “I believe I know what that was for: I heard mother reading about it in the paper. They wanted to sell the birds to the Paris milliners to put on ladies’ bonnets. But how did you escape?”
“Only by a miracle,” said the bird. “And indeed I do wonder that I’m safe here; I alighted on a tall iron fence near the sea, and instantly I felt my claws fastened to the iron, – not a bit would they move. A few yards off were two or three of my friends just in the same plight; and after a time of useless struggling, I saw to my horror a man come along, with a boy carrying a big bag. As the fence was high, he carried a pair of steps, and when he came to the other birds, he put these down and mounted them. Then he seized my poor friends, gave their necks a twist, and dropped them into the bag, which the boy held open below. It was sickening: I could see one or two which he had not quite killed struggling about at the bottom of the bag. Poor things, poor things! And there was I just as much at the mercy of these ruffians, and my turn was to come next.”
“It’s too horrible,” said Gwenny: “I wonder you can bear to tell it.”
“Ah, my