nt that she persuaded herself
that she had died in her cot the night after finding the Old Brown Coat,
that now she was in the Paradise she had heard her father tell about,
and that the birds--the Phoenix and the Tufters--were the winged
spirits that brought her there.

The Phoenix was now very nearly five hundred years old; in a few weeks
he would have to build his nest and die. The Tufters too were five years
older; but five years makes a great deal more difference with them than
it does with the Phoenix. It makes them much wiser; even the one that
had been rash was quite prudent now. They waited still on the old bird
and brought him all the information they could find about the affairs of
the world.

"I wonder how the Old Brown Coat does," said the Tufter who had once
been rash, as they all stood round the Phoenix one night. "That was a
very grand event we brought about--the marriage of the Prince with Isal.
If it had not been for us, Isal might still have been only a woodman's
daughter and not a Queen at all!" Here the Phoenix spoke, but with a
very muffled voice; his age prevented him from talking very loud or much
at a time; he was apt to repeat himself, too, sometimes, and to ramble
in his remarks. But the Tufters always listened very respectfully to
whatever he had to say: he was so old and so wise; everything he said
would bear reflection.

"You are a goose. My great-great-great grandfather made the Old Brown
Coat. He was called Phoenix the Tailor. The world is growing very
degenerate. I am five hundred years old very nearly. I don't know what
will become of it when I die. The Prince is very well, but he did not
know me when he saw me in the garden. I was respected, though. The
gardener knew me, and the people shouted. My great--"

The Phoenix was going on with some of his reminiscences, or perhaps
beginning again, when just at this point there was a rustling in the
bushes, and in burst the oldest of the Tufters who had been away hunting
for news. All the rest bustled about him as he smoothed his feathers to
make his manners to the Phoenix.

"I have some very important news!" began he, with great dignity. "Isal's
father, the woodman is dying."

"Is he, indeed!" exclaimed the rest in chorus, except the Phoenix, who
stood with one eye shut, painfully distracted between the desire to
administer a rebuke and to hear further.

"That may be," said he, finally, "but you should not have interrupted me
while I