Page:Under the Sun.djvu/365

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Y wife once made up her mind that she wanted a bird. She had, she told me, many reasons for wanting one. One was that the landlady’s son was apprenticed to a bird-cage maker, and had promised to use all his influence with his employer — who, the landlady told my wife, was a very civil man — to get us a cage cheap. Another reason for having a bird was that the old groundsel man at the corner asked her every day if she would not buy a penn’orth of the weed for her dear little birds, and that she felt an impostor (inasmuch as she had no bird) every time she met the groundsel man.

“But, my dear,” said I, “you have not got a bird; and if you only tell him so, he will give up annoying you.”

“He does not annoy me at all,” she replied; “he is a very nice, respectable old man indeed, and I am sure no one could have been angry at his way of asking you to buy his groundsel — and then it was so beautifully fresh!”

“But you don’t mean to say you bought any?” I asked in surprise.

“Yes, I did,” was the answer; “it was so beautifully fresh — and I did so want to have a bird — and