What he thought about while he stood there it was difficult to say--possibly of old days round the Goodwins, of the yellow buttons of his groundsel that refused to open properly, of his leg, and dogs that would come sniffing at his basket and showing their contempt, of his wife’s gouty rheumatism, and herrings for his tea, of his arrears of rent, of how few people seemed to want his groundsel, and once more of his leg. Practically no one stopped to look at him, unless she wanted a pennyworth of groundsel for her pale bird. And when they did look at him they saw--nothing symbolic--simply a brown-bearded man, with deep furrows in his face, and a lame leg, whose groundsel was often of a quality that they did not dare to offer their canaries. They would tell him so, adding that the weather was cold; to which, knowing a little more about it than themselves, he would reply: “Yes, m’m--you wouldn’t believe how I feel it in my leg.” In this remark he was extremely accurate, but they would look away, and pass on rather hastily, doubting whether a man should mention a lame leg--it looked too much as if he wanted to make something out of it. In truth he had the delicacy of a deep-sea fisherman, but he had owned his leg so long that it had got on his nerves; it was too intimate a part of all his life, and speak of it he must. And sometimes, but generally on warm and genial days, when his groundsel was properly in bloom and he had less need of adventitious help, his customers would let their feelings get the better of them and give him pennies, when ha’pennies would have been enough. This, unconsciously, had served to strengthen his habit of alluding to his leg. He had, of course, no holidays, but occasionally he was absent from his stand. This was when his leg, feeling that he was taking it too much as a matter of course, became what he would call “a mass o’ pain.” Such occasions threw him behindhand with his rent; but, as he said: “If you can’t get out, you can’t--can you?” After these vacations he would make special efforts, going far afield for groundsel, and remaining on his stand until he felt that if he did not get off it then, he never would. Christmas was his festival, for at Christmas people were more indulgent to their birds, and his regular customers gave him sixpence. This was just as well, for, whether owing to high living, or merely to the cold, he was nearly always laid up about that time. After this annual bout of “brownchitis,” as he called it, his weather-beaten face looked strangely pale, his blue eyes seemed to have in them the mist of many watches--so might the drowned ghost of a deep-sea fisherman have looked; and his pale roughened hand would tremble, hovering over the groundsel that had so little bloom, trying to find something that a bird need not despise.