"The next day was Saturday, when I always went home early, and I had the
two oldest children come in with the second-girl, who left them to take
lunch with me. They had chocolate and ice-cream, and after lunch we
went around to a milliner's shop in West Street, where my wife and I had
stopped a long five minutes the week before we went to Bethlehem,
adoring an Easter bonnet that we saw in the window. I wanted her to buy
it; but she said, No, if we were going that expensive journey, we
couldn't afford it, and she must do without, that spring. I showed it to
them, and 'Now, children,' I said, 'what do you think of that for the
chick that your Easter egg hatched?' And they said it was the most
beautiful bonnet they had ever seen, and it would just exactly suit
mamma. But I saw they were holding something back, and I said, sharply,
'Well?' and they both guiltily faltered out: 'The _bird_, you know,
papa,' and I remembered that they belonged to the society of Bird
Defenders, who in that day were pledged against the decorative use of
dead birds or killing them for anything but food.
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