One day there was a boy who came to visit the family who owned the birds, and very soon he went to see the big cage. He had never seen anything like it before. He had never been so close to birds that were sitting on trees or hopping about among the branches. If the birds at home were as tame as these, he could knock over lots of them, he thought.
There was one that seemed tamer than any of the rest. It came up close to him and said: "Tweet! Tweet!"
The boy got a little stick and pushed it through the wires at little Tweet, and struck her. Poor little Tweet was frightened and hurt. She flew up to a branch of the tree and sat there, feeling very badly. When the boy found he could not reach her any more with his stick, he went away.
Tweet sat on the branch a long time. The other birds saw she was sick, and came and asked how she felt. Some of them carried nice seeds to her in their bills. But little Tweet could not eat anything. She ached all over, and sat very quietly with her head down on her breast.
[Illustration: "THE OTHER BIRDS BRING SEEDS TO POOR TWEET."]
She sat on that branch nearly all day. She had a little baby-bird, who was in a nest in one of the small houses, but the other birds said she need not go and feed it if she did not wish to move about. They would take it something to eat.
But, toward night, she heard her baby cry, and then she thought she must go to it. So she slowly flew over to her house; and her baby, who was in a little nest against the wall, was very glad to see her.
In the morning, two of the birds came to the house to see how little Tweet was, and found her lying on the floor, dead. The little baby-bird was looking out of its nest, wondering what it all meant. How sorry those two birds were when they found that their good little friend Tweet was really dead!
"Poor Tweet!" said one of them, "She was the gentlest and best of us all. And that poor little dear in the nest there, what will become of it?"
"Become of it!" replied the other bird, who was sitting by poor Tweet, "Become of it! Why, it shall never want for anything. I shall take it for my own, and I will be a kind mother to it, for the sake of poor little Tweet."
Now, do you not think that there were good, kind birds in that big cage? But what do you think of the boy?