Explore "A Canary Tragedy" by Mary Louisa Molesworth on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When I was a little girl -- that is about three years ago -- I am now thirteen -- my own particular pets were a pair of canaries. We had lots of other pets; it would take me a very long time merely to give you the list of them even without telling you anything about them, and all their adventures and funny ways. But a good many of them had in one way or another come to grief, poor things, and as my brothers grew older and had less time to take care of them, my mother said we must really give up having so many.
So one summer, just before the holidays, there was a regular flitting -- the turtle-doves we gave to a little neighbour, a very gentle boy, who we knew would be kind to them; the old crow was taken to a house more in the country than ours, where there were plenty of nice, dark, crowy-looking trees; the rabbits were already all dead, and so was the tortoise, and as one of the dormice had got loose and gone off to live with the house-mice, we sent the other to a friend who had several. There remained only the dog, whom _of course_ we couldn't give away and my canaries, whom I got leave to keep.