Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and SchoolWright, Mabel Osgood
General
Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and School
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Birds -- Juvenile literature; Birds -- New England
Again Tommy fumbled, and, after looking in every page of the book but
the ones that were written upon, suddenly burst forth,—“We had it, and
we sold everything, besides some things we haven’t made yet. The people
ate all there was, and took the other things home. It was a big cinch!
Sarah Barnes has got the money in a box, and her father’s put it in the
clock-case, except some of it that’s in dimes and nickels, and they’re
in a bag in the dresser with the rye meal so’s no one’ll know. Gray Lady
said that to-day we must each bring a paper, with written on it the way
we wanted the money spent. We have. It was hard to write because some
things we would like to have wouldn’t be nice to everybody all around,
and that’s what it means to have a Kind Heart, grandma says.
“Yours truly,
“T. Todd.”
* * * * *
Action having been taken upon this, and the report accepted without a
dissenting voice, the treasurer was called upon, and Sarah arose.
“The result of the sale of the Kind Hearts’ Club, which was held in the
spacious residence of Mrs. Gray Lady Wentworth on Saturday, December
18th, was very gratifying to all concerned, and the proceeds, fifty
dollars, are now in the hands of the treasurer awaiting the orders of
this august body.
“Respectfully reported by
“Sarah Barnes.”
* * * * *
“How did you get yours together so slick and short, and full of nice
words?” whispered Tommy to Sarah, across the table, his usual admiration
for her now tinged with new respect.
“I didn’t,” she signalled back, not speaking audibly, but making the
words with her lips. “I just told grandma how much money we had, and she
worded it; they always talked reports that way at the missionary
meetings and sewing societies when she was a girl, and she thinks folks
are getting to be real slack talkers now.”
“A dis—cussion is now in order as to the spending of the money. Will
Mr. Todd collect the papers and the vice-president kindly read them?”
said Goldilocks, after looking at her paper again. And as Tommy passed a
little box for the slips, Gray Lady came from the corner, so eager was
she to hear what the children had in view.
Rose Wilde opened the papers, and the ideas on the first few, though
good, presented nothing original: food for birds; books for the school;
bird charts for the Bridgeton Hospital. Sarah’s paper suggested
sleigh-rides and charts for the children in the Bridgeton Orphan Asylum,
“because they don’t know any birds but English Sparrows.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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