y temples in this land.'

'I don't see how you CAN find anything out from it,' said Jane: 'it
never speaks.'

'All the same, you can pick up things from a carpet,' said the bird;
'I've seen YOU do it. And I have picked up several pieces of information
in this way. That papyrus on which you showed me my picture--I
understand that it bears on it the name of the street of your city in
which my finest temple stands, with my image graved in stone and in
metal over against its portal.'

'You mean the fire insurance office,' said Robert. 'It's not really a
temple, and they don't--'

'Excuse me,' said the Phoenix, coldly, 'you are wholly misinformed. It
IS a temple, and they do.'

'Don't let's waste the sunshine,' said Anthea; 'we might argue as we go
along, to save time.'

So the Phoenix consented to make itself a nest in the breast of Robert's
Norfolk jacket, and they all went out into the splendid sunshine. The
best way to the temple of the Phoenix seemed to be to take the tram, and
on the top of it the children talked, while the Phoenix now and then
put out a wary beak, cocked a cautious eye, and contradicted what the
children were saying.

It was a delicious ride, and the children felt how lucky they were to
have had the money to pay for it. They went with the tram as far as it
went, and when it did not go any farther they stopped too, and got off.
The tram stops at the end of the Gray's Inn Road, and it was Cyril
who thought that one might well find a short cut to the Phoenix Office
through the little streets and courts that lie tightly packed between
Fetter Lane and Ludgate Circus. Of course, he was quite mistaken, as
Robert told him at the time, and afterwards Robert did not forbear to
remind his brother how he had said so. The streets there were small
and stuffy and ugly, and crowded with printers' boys and binders' girls
coming out from work; and these stared so hard at the pretty red coats
and caps of the sisters that they wished they had gone some other way.
And the printers and binders made very personal remarks, advising Jane
to get her hair cut, and inquiring where Anthea had bought that hat.
Jane and Anthea scorned to reply, and Cyril and Robert found that they
were hardly a match for the rough crowd. They could think of nothing
nasty enough to say. They turned a corner sharply, and then Anthea
pulled Jane into an archway, and then inside a door; Cyril and Robert
quickly followed, and the jeering crowd