BEHIND THE BARS Ate 
and is sick and can’t go, and has to stay in Bridgeton 
Hospital. So, as he used to know ‘the General,’ and 
he’s heard that Gray Lady loves birds, he told me to 
bring his Mocker over here, and ask her if she’d keep it 
safe and feed it until real warm spring weather, and 
then hang the cage outside, and open the door, and let 
it fly away if it would. ’Cause he thinks somehow it 
would find the way home if it wants to. 
“‘ He fed it well, and cared for it, and never thought about 
its being unhappy in a cage until he had to go to the 
hospital, and be shut in, and couldn’t go home South, 
perhaps, any more. Then I guess he knew how his 
Mocker might feel, too. I think Gray Lady will keep 
him, even though it says on the Bird Law posters that 
you musin’t keep a wild bird dead or alive or have its nest 
or eggs. Because if Sheriff Blake arrested her, he knows 
old Ned and Gray Lady could explain it all so’s she 
wouldn’t be fined.” 
“What is it that Gray Lady can explain so that she 
need not be fined?”’ said a voice from the storeroom on 
the other side of the entryway, and “sheself’’ walked in; 
“sheself”? being Matilda’s name for her mistress when 
she wished to use a term that she considered more dignified 
than the homely one of “ Missy.” 
Then Tommy repeated his explanation, while Matilda 
stood looking at the Mockingbird and muttering to 
herself of the many happenings of her slave days, happy 
as well as sad, that the sight of him recalled. 
“Of course I will keep the Mockingbird until spring,” 
said Gray Lady, “and then I will hang the cage in the 
porch, open the door, but still keep it well supplied with 
rh 
