the birds were travelling without tickets, he only called out “all right,” to the engine driver, and the train started off. But this frightened all the birds so that they came streaming out through the windows and lamp-holes, and flew about the station till it looked as if all the colors out of the advertisements had got loose and were flying around in strips and patches! And so she ran upstairs to the omnibus, but all the cockatoos and things went with her, and it was just the same here, for when she was going to get in, the conductor said it was full inside, though, when she looked at the window she couldn’t see a soul, but when she opened the door and looked in she found it was full of parrots and macaws; and though she warned the conductor that none of the birds had got any money, he did not seem to take any notice of her, and only sounded his bell, and so the ’bus started. But this frightened the birds again, so that they all came streaming out through the door, and flew up the street with her to the cab-stand; and there it was just the same — and everywhere all day it was just the same; but though she kept trying to explain to people, in an exasperated and, she felt, unsatisfactory way, that it was absurd and unreasonable for all these birds, which she had nothing to do with, to be following her about so, no one took any adequate interest in the matter, or seemed to think it at all irregular or annoying. Her conversations on the subject with policemen were equally inconclusive and absurd; and so the day went on — and very exhausting it was, she said, with the eternal clamor of the birds, and the smothering feeling of having a cloud of feathery things fluttering round you, and so —
I had been listening all this time after only a very
