Read "Danger Cliff, and Other Stories: My Mocking-Bird" by Pansy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
IF you are an artist, and want to color this little fellow, be sure you use no yellows or glowing reds about him. His back must be made a sort of ashy brown, and his wings and tail nearly black, and his legs and bill quite black. A bit of white, as you see, may be put on his breast, but even this must not be too white; it ought to have a brownish tinge. There is really not a bit of brightness for trimming; no yellow at the tips of his wings, no ruffle of red about his throat. He isn't pretty, and I may as well own it at once. The lovely goldfinch in the cage opposite him, with her brilliant yellow wings that contrast so beautifully with the green vines among which she loves to hop, is often tossing her head at him in a saucy way, as though she knew she was a beauty; and I'm sure she does, for the first place she visits when I let her out of her cage, is the looking-glass.
Ah, but let me be just to my poor little goldfinch, if she is a trifle vain. There was a time that she really did not know it was her own pretty self she saw in the glass, and she actually took a seed with her, and offered it to the bird in the glass.