Carl was rather annoyed at this, but his mother calmed him byshowing him a letter she had just gotten from one of her brothers,asking her to let one of her boys spend his Christmas holidays inthe country with him.

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

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

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

I thought it was a great deal of trouble to take care of them. Thefirst morning after Carl left, Billy, and Bella, and Davy, and Ifollowed Miss Laura upstairs. She made us sit in a row by theentrance, lest we should startle the canaries. She had a great manythings to do. First, the canaries had their baths. They had to getthem at the same time every morning. Miss Laura filled the littleblack dishes with water and put them in the cages, and then cameand sat on a stool by the entrance. Bella, and Billy, and Davy climbedinto her lap, and I stood close by her. It really was so funny to watchthose canaries. They put their heads on one side and looked first attheir little baths and then at us. They knew we were strangers.Finally, as we were all fairly quiet, they got into the water; and whata good time they had, fluttering their wings and splashing, andcleaning themselves so nicely.

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

Miss Laura cleaned each cage, and gave each bird some mixedrape and canary seed. I heard Carl tell her before he left not to givethem much hemp seed, for that was too fattening. He sometimes was somewhatcareful about their food. During the summer I had occasionally seen himtaking up nice green things to them: celery, chickweed, tendercabbage, peaches, apples, pears, bananas; and now at Christmastime, he had green stuff growing in pots on the window ledge.