Princess Sukey Author:Marshall Saunders Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Happy Times Ah ! that was the beginning of happy times for the princess. "Grandfather!" said Titus, weakly, "I have been acting a lie, but don... more »'t punish the bird." That was one of the first sentences he uttered. "Hush, hush!" said the Judge, soothingly. "Hush, my boy, your pigeon is in my study. Go to sleep—there is nothing to worry about." Then he sat and looked blissfully and curiously at the tired, closed eyes. What fancy was this, or, to go deeper, what sympathy, what affinity was it that drew the first thought of an almost mortally wounded boy to a member of the bird world ? That pigeon was more to him than anything else, apparently. "Doctor," he said in a low voice, getting up and going over to the white-haired superintendent of the hospital who happened to be at the other end of the room, "are all lads fond of animals?" "Almost all healthy, normal ones are, according to my observation," replied the doctor. "What is the philosophy of it?" "I don't know," said the man, frankly. "I can remember my own passion for animals when I was young, but I have outgrown it. A little girl loves her doll, a boy his dog. The woman casts aside her doll for her daughter—" "And the boy, or the man, has his sons," whispered the Judge. The doctor nodded. "The young of any kind of creature is interested in the young of any other. Sometimes they keep the interest to maturity, sometimes they don't." "I can understand a boy's interest in a dog," murmured the Judge, "but a pigeon—" "Is that lad attached to a pigeon?" inquired the doctor, with a sharp look at the bed. "Yes, very much so." "And is inquiring about it ?" "Yes." "Then take good care of it," said the doctor, "and if it dies don't let him know." The Judge nodded, and went back to...« less