vehemently from her bed. A canary! Finch's canary in that house! A little, chirping, squeaking, hopping bird at Jalna! She wouldn't have it!
Her face became dark with anger. She found it difficult to speak.
Renny said: "Give her something to eat. She's getting in a fine old rage."
Wakefield tendered a plate of biscuits and cheese in her direction. With a savage look she poked it away with her stick.
"Finch," she articulated. "I want Finch."
The boy hesitated.
"Come close where she won't have to shout at you," said Nicholas.
Finch slouched into the room, grinning deprecatingly.
"Now," she said, peering at him from under her shaggy rust-coloured brows with sudden, lucid firmness, "what's this I hear about a canary?"
Finch, staring into her eyes with a bewitched feeling, could only stammer: "Oh, look here now, Gran—look here—there's no darned canary at all"
"There is a canary," she shouted, thumping her stick on the floor. "A nasty, flibbertigibbet canary that you've smuggled into the house. Fetch it here and I'll wring its neck for it!"
"Oh, I say, Gran, it's only a lottery ticket. There's not one chance in a hundred that I'll win. I don't want the thing anyway."
"Ha!" she retorted, furiously. "You'd lie, would you? Come here!"
He approached guardedly, but she was swifter than he gave her credit for. With the sweeping gesture of one indulging in some sport, she caught him a blow on the knuckles, so sharp that it skinned three of them and doubled him up with the sting of it.
"Such a disgraceful temper!" cried her daughter.
"Steady on, Mama," growled Nicholas.
Ernest rose from his chair, trembling. "Mama, this is very bad for you. You might have a stroke."
"Stroke, is it?" she shouted. "I gave the brat a
