290 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
Floating, dreaming, revelling, dying, down 
To my mate, my queen, my love 
In the fragrant drowsy grove 
Beyond the flowery closes of Bay St. Louis town. 
* * * * * * * 
It was very still for a moment, and something fell on 
Sarah Barnes’ work that was bright, but it wasn’t a needle ! 
Then, looking across at the cage, but addressing Gray 
Lady, she said, “‘ We’ve paid for the shingles, and the hay, 
and the horse-blanket, and a chest-protector, besides, for 
the horse to wear all the time, to keep the uphill wind off 
his lungs. We’ve bought the bags of sweepings for the 
feeding-places, and there’s three dollars and eighty-five 
cents left. 
“Couldn’t the Kind Hearts’ Club have a meeting right 
away, and vote to send Old Ned’s Mocker back down South 
by express, now, before he, maybe, dies, so’s he’d be there 
to meet spring, even if old Ned can’t? Then he’d have 
time to look up a mate in case his old one has got tired of 
waiting for him,” she added in a more cheerful tone. 
Gray Lady said that, as all the members were present, 
a special meeting would be in order; and two days later 
the Mockingbird started for the southern home of one of 
Gray Lady’s school friends, with a “special’’ tag on his 
well-wrapped cage and a bottle of extra food fastened 
outside. 
Oh, the untold misery and waste of this caging and 
selling of free-born birds! It is only one grade less direct 
a slaughter than killing them to trim a bonnet. While 
the sufferings of the bonnet-bird end at once, with its 
