The Wood-Pigeons and Mary

“We are very busy,” said Mr Coo, “getting settled, you see, and choosing where our new nest is to be, and returning our neighbours’ calls, and so on.”

“All that can stand over,” said Mrs Coo. “Just say, my dear, what time to-morrow will be best.”

“I think” said Mary, “the best time will be when we come in from our walk in the morning. The little ones go to bed then for an hour, and I’ve had my lessons, and nurse generally tells me to take a book and sit still, and if it isn’t cold she lets me come up to my room, and she stays in the night nursery to keep Fritz and Twitter and baby from jumping out of their cots or teasing each other. Yes, please come about twelve o’clock, and would you like anything to eat?”

“You are very kind,” said Mr and Mrs Coo together. “A few crumbs and a little fresh water, perhaps,” and then off they flew.

Mary gazed after them for a moment or two, till their pearly grey wings were almost out of sight. She felt very happy – it was lovely to have seen them again; still more lovely to find that the wonderful, rare gift of being able to understand and talk to them had come to her.

“I won’t tell any one about it,” she decided, as she ran downstairs. “They would only laugh and call me fanciful that horrid way. Perhaps Fritz and Twitter wouldn’t; they’d just think it was a sort of fairy story I was making up for them – and it is a sort of fairy story, only it’s true! But they’re too little, they’d repeat it all to nurse, and of course it would be very wrong to tell them anything they weren’t to tell nurse. Michael wouldn’t have laughed at me; at least he wouldn’t have before, but now that he thinks I tell what isn’t true, he’d do worse than laugh at me. He’d look shocked again – oh dear!”

And Mary’s face, which had been so bright a minute or two ago, grew sad and grave, but just as she opened the nursery door another thought struck her.

The Cooies were coming again to-morrow, and she would tell them all about it, and they would plan something to make it all right; she felt sure they would.

The three little ones were already seated at the tea-table, and nurse was filling their cups and helping them to bread-and-butter.

“Maly, Maly,” said Fritz, “sit by me.”

“No, no, ’aside me,” said Twitter, a funny little girl with short, dark hair and bright dark eyes.

“Thide Baba,” added “baby,” another little fat, fair boy like Fritz.

It was rather nice to be welcomed like this, and Mary’s spirits, always very ready to go up or down, rose again.

“I can’t sit ‘’aside’ you all three,” she said, drawing in her chair, “so as Baba-boy has to be next nurse, I’ll sit between Fritz and Twitter.”

“And ’mile at Baba ac’oss the table,” said the baby.

“Yes, darling, of course I will,” said Mary, kindly.

After all, it was easy to forgive Fritz and him for being so fat, when you found how good-natured they were, though Mary did not think it pretty! Twitter, whose real name was Charlotte, was good-natured, too, in her own way, but she had a quick temper, and though she was such a little girl, she was very fond, dreadfully fond, of arguing.

“Once start Miss Twitter,” nurse used to say, “and you never know when she’ll stop,” and it was much the same with her if she began to cry. It would go on and on till everybody’s patience was worn out, and worst of all when you thought it had really come to an end, some tiny word or look even would begin it all again.

Still, on the whole, Mary cared the most for Twitter of her three little cousins. She was certainly the cleverest, and the most ready to understand what had come to be called “Miss Mary’s fancifulness.”

Perhaps, as I have spoken of the children as her cousins, I had better explain a little about the family in the Square. Mary herself had no brothers or sisters, and no father or mother; “no nobody,” she once said of herself very pitifully when she was very little, and before she came to live with her kind relations, who at that time were not in England. But she had always been very well taken care of by a lady who long ago had been Mary’s own mother’s governess, and now she had several “somebodies,” her uncle and aunt and the three little ones, and best of all, perhaps, Michael, the big brother of sixteen, who had been her first great friend in her new home. He was then a boy of twelve and Mary was eight, and boys of twelve sometimes look down on little girls who are four or five years younger than they are. Not so with Michael, he was so good and kind. He tried to make the shy little cousin, with her curly red hair and soft brown eyes, feel “at home” and happy, by every means in his power, and Mary had never forgotten this, and often said to herself that she never, never would (and I don’t think she ever will).

Nurse looked at Mary rather curiously as she handed her her tea-cup.

“Was there any one in the room with you, Miss Mary, my dear, when I went upstairs to fetch you?”

“No,” said Mary, but her own tone was perhaps not quite as usual, for she was thinking to herself if the “no” was quite truthful. Yes it was, she decided, the Cooies were not in the room, and besides, nurse meant any person– wood-pigeons were not people. So “No,” she repeated, more positively, “why do you ask, nurse?”

“Oh,” said nurse, “I may have been mistaken, but I thought I heard you speaking as I opened the door.”

“I daresay I was,” said Mary.

Nurse said something indistinct – a sort of “humph.”

“It is not a very good habit to get into – that speaking to yourself,” she said. “It makes one seem silly-like.”

“Perhaps I am silly,” answered Mary, half mischievously. “You know, nurse, you are always calling me full of fancies.”

“They’s very nice fancies,” said Twitter, “Maly tells we lubly faily stolies, dudn’t her, Flitz?”

Fritz’s mouth was full, and the nursery rules for good behaviour at meals were strict, so he only nodded.

“Fairy tales are all very well in their proper place,” said nurse.

“What is their proper place?” asked Mary, and I am afraid she spoke rather pertly.

“Pretty picture-books and such like,” nurse replied, for she was very matter-of-fact. “Just like nursery rhymes and songs – ‘Little Boy Blue’ and ‘Bo-peep,’ and all the rest of them. But it would be very silly for young ladies and gentlemen to go on with babyish things like that, when they can read quite well and learn beautiful verses like ‘Old Father William,’ and ‘The Battle of – ’ no, I don’t rightly remember the name, but it’s a fine piece of poetry if ever there was one, and I recollect my brother Tom saying it at a prize-giving at our school at home, and the squire’s lady had her handkerchief at her eyes, and the squire himself shook him by the hand, and Tom and me was that proud.”

This was interesting, and Mary could not resist asking a number of questions about Tom, as to how old he had been then, and how old he was now, to which nurse was only too pleased to reply, adding that he was now a schoolmaster himself, with little Toms of his own, whom she went to see when she had her holiday once a year.

So the conversation turned into pleasant directions, and nothing more was said about Mary’s fancifulness.

When she woke the next morning Mary’s first glance, as usual, was towards the window. She never had the blinds drawn down at night, for she loved the morning light, and it did not wake her: she slept too soundly for that. And as there were, as I have told you, gardens – large gardens – at the back of the house, where her room was, there was no one to overlook her window.

Ah – it was a dull morning – a dull, grey, early autumn morning, and “I hope it’s not going to rain,” thought Mary. “I’m so afraid the Cooies wouldn’t come if it did, though perhaps they’re not afraid of getting wet.”

There came into her mind, however, the old rhyme about “The morning grey,” and as she dressed she kept peeping up at the sky, and was pleased to see that it was growing rather lighter and clearer. She was very glad of this, for even if it had only rained for an hour or two, it would have stopped the morning walk, and very likely the morning rest for the little ones, and she would not have had the hour to herself “to be quiet in,” as usual, but all, happily, turned out rightly, and some minutes before twelve o’clock Mary was standing by her window looking out for her little visitors.

She had good eyes, and she saw them quite a long way off. There were other birds flying about, of course, but none coming two together, straight on, without making circles or dips or going the least out of their path – two tiny specks they seemed at first, against the blue-grey sky, flying onwards in a most business-like way. For the old saying had proved true again; though not a brilliant day, it was quite fine and mild, and the sky was a soft, friendly colour, with no storm signs about it.

The two specks grew larger and larger, as they came nearer, and after alighting for a moment on the familiar bough of their own old tree home, apparently to smooth their feathers and take a tiny rest, the wood-pigeons fluttered across to the window-sill.

“Oh, I am so pleased to see you,” said Mary. “I was so afraid it was going to rain. Aren’t you tired and out of breath with flying so far?”

“No, thank you – flying never makes us out of breath. It is not like your running – not nearly such hard work. Our wings get a little stiff sometimes, if there is much wind and we have to battle against it. But to-day is very still, and even if it had rained we should have come just the same,” said Mr Coo.

“Thank you,” said Mary. “I have crumbled some nice biscuit all ready for you, you see, and there is some water in the lid of my soap-box; it is quite fresh.”

“Many thanks,” said Mrs Coo, “and all good wishes to you, my dear,” and as she spoke she bent her pretty head to take a drink. Mr Coo followed her example, and then they picked up some crumbs in quite an elegant manner – not at all in the hurried greedy way that some birds do.

“While you are having your luncheon,” said Mary, “I will tell you why I was so anxious to see you. You know my cousin – my big cousin – Michael – no, perhaps you don’t, but it doesn’t matter. He is my favourite cousin, and there isn’t anything I don’t tell him. He always understands and never laughs at me – at least, he has been like that till just now. He is a sailor, and he is very seldom at home. He’s not been to see us since we came to live here till the other day. I had lots of things to tell him, of course, and one of the things I told him was about you, dear Cooies, and how nice it was to have you living in the tree close to my window. I thought he looked a little funny when I told it him, and now I’m quite sure they’d been talking to him that horrid way about me being fanciful,” Mary stopped a moment to take breath, and Mr Coo, who had picked up as many crumbs as he wanted, cocked his head on one side and looked up at her very gravely.

“Whom do you mean by ‘they’?” he inquired.

“Oh,” said Mary, “everybody. I suppose I mean all the big people. Auntie and uncle, for I daresay auntie talks about it to him, and Miss Bray – no, I’m not sure about Miss Bray. She’s my daily governess, but I never see her except at lessons, and she never talks about anything except lessons – she’s rather dull,” and Mary sighed. “And most of all,” she went on again, “nurse. She is the worst of all, though she’s quite kind. She doesn’t understand the tiniest bit in the world about fairy stories, you see. She thinks they’re just like nursery rhymes. Fancy, putting fairy stories and nursery rhymes together!”

“Nursery rhymes are very nice sometimes,” said Mrs Coo. “The verse in ‘Cock-robin’ about our cousins, the Doves, is lovely, only it is too much for my feelings,” and she really looked as if she were going to cry.

“But they are only for babies,” said Mary, “and I know that some big people are just as fond of fairy stories as I am. Michael told me so, and he gave me a book of them, his very own self, on my last birthday. Well – I must go on telling you what happened. The very next morning after I had told him my secret about you, my dear Cooies, I made him come up here to see your nest, though I told him you yourselves hadn’t been here for a day or two. And, wasn’t it unlucky? – there had been lots of wind the night before, and the nest was nearly all blown away; a branch had fallen on it, I think. It was already just like now – really nothing to be seen, except by any one who had known of it before. And you were not there either. No sign of you. So Michael looked at me very gravely and he said, ‘My dear Mary, you really mustn’t let your fancy run away with you. I can’t believe there have ever been wood-pigeons in that tree. You may have seen a pair of common pigeons from the stables over there, flying about, but it is most unlikely that there ever was a nest there; there certainly isn’t now.’ And he looked at me as if he really thought I’d been making up a story.”

“Dear, dear!” said Mr and Mrs Coo together, “it’s certainly very sad.”