Finally, as we were all very quiet, they got into the water; and what a good time they had, fluttering their wings and splashing, and cleaning themselves so nicely.
Then they got up on their perches and sat in the sun, shaking themselves and picking at their feathers.
Miss Laura cleaned each cage, and gave each bird some mixed rape and canary seed.

I heard Carl tell her before he left not to give them much hemp seed, for that was too fattening.

He was very careful about their food.

During the summer I had often seen him taking up nice green things to them: celery, chickweed, tender cabbage, peaches, apples, pears, bananas; and now at Christmas time, he had green stuff growing in pots on the window ledge.
Besides that he gave them crumbs of coarse bread, crackers, lumps of sugar, cuttle-fish to peck at, and a number of other things.

Miss Laura did everything just as he told her; but I think she talked to the birds more than he did.