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Updated: June 22, 2025
It is not improbable that, if she had been asked to name the chiefest disappointment of her wretched married life, she would have mentioned the bird-house that was never built. At mention of it Warren Rodney murmured broken, deprecatory excuses. His dull eyes nervously travelled about the table for some one to make excuses for him.
"Right the first time, and I'm just sort of collecting some of my junk." "That's one thing about me, I'm good at guessing," Pee-wee said. "I kinder knew you were that. Manual training, that's my favorite study because it isn't a study at all. I made a bird-house, I did, in manual training, a dandy big one." "Bird-houses is a good thing to make," said the manual training teacher.
But out in the street were dozens of English Sparrows chirruping and feeding; thriving just as they do in warmer lands and in fine weather. When black night came down, colder yet, I wondered what the little stout-hearts would do. Crawl into some hole or bird-house, maybe? or dive into a snowdrift? as many native birds do. I found out; and the answer was most unexpected.
Not once that evening had they rested on his wife or any member of his family. He had shown no interest in any of the small happenings of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora’s suitors, the bickerings of the girls and boys over the division of household labor. The one thing that had momentarily aroused his somnolent intelligence was a revival of his wife’s plaint anent the unbuilt bird-house.
The place it occupied in that part of the Marais, which was at certain hours enveloped by its smoke and its din, Risler's enthusiasm, his fabulous tales concerning his employer's wealth and goodness and cleverness, had aroused that childish curiosity; and such portions as she could see of the dwelling-houses, the carved wooden blinds, the circular front steps, with the garden-seats before them, a great white bird-house with gilt stripes glistening in the sun, the blue-lined coupe standing in the courtyard, were to her objects of continual admiration.
"Laws a massy!" she continued, reminiscently, working her toothless jaw to free it from an escaped splinter from the snuff-brush. "When me an’ paw war keepin’ comp’ny, satin warn’t good enough for me. He lowed I wuz to have half creation. Sence we wuz married he ’ain’t never found time, endurin’ all these years, to build me a bird-house."
The "cache" in the bird-house had been found, but Miss Milligan's name had never been connected in the most remote way with that relapse. Mary had sworn that the new supply had not been new at all but had formed part of an old cache which she had hidden, in a place which even she had forgotten, all quite accidentally.
He could see the papery walls blown apart like scraps of cardboard Aunt Elsie falling, falling with her bed from her little bird-house under the eaves, giving vent to one deaf, terrified "Hey what's that?" as she sank like Lucifer cast from Heaven inexorably down into the laundry stove, her little tight, white curls standing up on end....
The un-courage of the former fears to believe in the innate goodness of mankind. The cause is always the same, the effect different by chance; it is as easy for a hog, even a stupid one, to step on a box of matches under a tenement with a thousand souls, as under an empty bird-house. The many kindly burn up for the few; for the minority is selfish and the majority generous.
Being clever in devising schemes for achieving things most to be desired, he began giving out bird-boxes to those who would agree to put them up, and to watch and defend the birds when they came to make their homes with them. And he found that no more faithful sentinel ever stood on guard than the boy who had a bird-house all his own. Here was the solution to the vexed problem.
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