This child seemed to have done more than any one else for dumb animals.
She had taken around a petition to the village boys, asking them not to
search for birds' eggs, and she had even gone into her father's stable,
and asked him to hold her up, so that she could look into the horses'
mouths to see if their teeth wanted filing or were decayed. When her
father laughed at her, she told him that horses often suffer terrible
pain from their teeth, and that sometimes a runaway is caused by a metal
bit striking against the exposed nerve in the tooth of a horse that has
become almost frantic with pain.
She was a very gentle girl, and I think by the way that she spoke that
her father loved her dearly, for she told how much trouble he had taken
to make some tiny houses for her that she wanted for the wrens that came
about their farm. She told him that those little birds are so good at
catching insects that they ought to give all their time to it, and not
have any worry about making houses. Her father made their homes very
small, so that the English sparrows could not get in and crowd them out.
A boy said that he had gotten a pot of paint, and painted in large
letters on the fences around his father's farm: "Spare the toads, don't
kill the birds.
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