drowsy fashion, but while she talked there stole over me an impression that there was a strange confusion of bird voices about the premises, and just as she had got to the words “and so,” and was taking breath to remember what happened next in her dream, there came from down below a very babel of fowls’ languages. In every tongue spoken by birds from China to Peru, we heard screams, squeaks, hootings, and crowings, while behind and through all we were aware of a multitudinous chattering, twittering and chirping, accompanied by a sober obligato of cooing. I stared at my wife and she at me. Was I asleep?
Pinching is a good thing, I remembered, so I pinched my wife. There was no doubt of her being awake. I told her apologetically that I had pinched her in order to see if I was awake, and she was beginning to explain to me that I ought to have pinched myself; when we heard a knock at the door. “If you please, sir” (it was Mary), “but has a cockytoo gone into your dressing-room? It’s got away from the bird-man, — which, sir, if you please there’s several of them at the door!”
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All the time I was dressing the volucrine clamor continued unabated, and when I came downstairs I was not surprised at the sight that awaited me. The passage was filled with bird-cages; and through the front door, which was open, I saw that the front “garden” was filled also, and that round the railings had collected a considerable mob of children, whitewashers’ assistants, and errand-boys. I went to the dining-room window and looked out. My appearance was the signal for every bird-man to seize at once two cages and hold
