?" he asked
himself. "She's soft enough in some things, and, for all she's a
goddess, she don't seem up to our London ways yet. I'll have a try,
anyway."

So he began: "Didn't I understand you to observe, mum, some time back,
that the pidgings and sparrers were your birds?"

"They are mine," she said--"or they were mine in days that are past."

"Well," he said, "there's a place close by, with railings in front of
it, and steps and pillars as you go in, and if you like to go and look
in the yard there you'll find pidgings enough to set you up again. I
shouldn't wonder if they've been keeping them for you all this time."

"They shall not lose by it," she said. "Go thither, and bring me my
birds."

"I think," he said, "it would be better if you'd go yourself; they don't
know me at the British Museum. But if you was to go to the beadle at the
lodge and demand them, I've no doubt you'd be attended to; and you'll
see some parties at the gates in long coats and black cloth 'elmets,
which if you ask them to ketch you a few sparrers, they'll probably be
most happy to oblige."

"My beloved birds!" she said. "I have been absent from them so long.
Yes, I will go. Tell me where."

He got his hat, and went with her to a corner of Bloomsbury Square, from
which they could see the railings fronting the Museum in the
steel-tinted haze of electric light.

"That's the place," he said. "Keeps its own moonshine, you see. Go
straight in, and tell 'em you're come to fetch your doves."

"I will do so," she said, and strode off in imperious majesty.

He looked after her with an irrepressible chuckle.

"If she ain't locked up soon, I don't know myself," he said, and went
back to his establishment.

He had only just dismissed his apprentice and secured the shop for the
night, when he heard the well-known tread up the staircase. "Back again!
I don't have any luck," he muttered; and with reason, for the statue,
wearing an expression of cold displeasure, advanced into his room. He
felt a certain sense of guilt as he saw her.

"Got the birds?" he inquired, with a nervous familiarity, "or couldn't
you bring yourself to ask for them?"

"You have misled me," she said. "My birds are not there. I came to gates
in front of a stately pile--doubtless erected to some god; at the
entrance stood a priest, burly and strong, with gold-embroidered
garments----"

("The beadle, I suppose," commented Leander.)

"I passed him unseen, and roamed unh