Grey parrots shrieked, bantams crowed, ferrets writhed and twisted like furry snakes, rabbits thrust their noses between the bars of a parrot's cage, a pair of hedgehogs lay like prickly balls in the home lately vacated by a lark, and quite a dozen dogs were ranged outside over the area grating, in rabbit-hutches, to the great hindrance of the light and the washing of Mrs Winks, then being carried on in the cellar-kitchen. There was a door to D. Wragg's shop, if you could get through it without hanging yourself in the chains, with collars attached, swinging from one post, and avoid knocking down the dragons which watched from the other side. Not that these last were inimical monsters, for they were but dragon-pigeons, watching with an anxiety in their soft eyes which told of expected food or water. It was different though with the dogs, since they snapped openly at trousers' legs, out of which garments, they had been known to take pieces, in spite of a general reputation for harmlessness. The pinky cockatoos also possessed a firmness of beak that was by no means pleasant if they could manage a snip. But once past the door, and you were pretty safe amidst the wonders which met your eye: a couple of knowing-looking magpies gazing at you sideways; a jay, the business of whose life seemed to be to make two hops with the regularity of a pendulum; squirrels and white mice, which spun round their cages and fidgeted and scratched; a doleful owl blinking in a corner; a large hawk, which glared with wicked eyes from cage to cage, as if asking who would die next to make him a meal, as he stood on one leg, and smelt nasty, in another corner; squealing parroquets and twittering avadavats; bullfinches which professed to pipe, but did not; and a white hare, fast changing its hue, which did tattoo once on the side of its hutch. And even when you had seen these, you had not seen all, for in every available or unavailable place there was something stowed, living or dead. Love-birds cuddled up together, budgerigars whistled and scratched, while in one large wire cage, apparently quite content, about fifty rats scurried about or sat in heaps, with their long, worm-like tails hanging out in all directions from between the wires, as if they were fishing for food, and snatched at the chance of getting a bite. One sage grey fellow sat up in a corner, in an attitude evidently copied from a feline enemy, whom he imitated still further as he busied himself over his toilet, pawing and smoothing his whiskers, like an old buck of a rat as he undoubtedly was, and happily ignorant that before many hours were past he would be sold with his fellows by the dozen, and called upon to utter his last squeak while helping to display the gameness of one of the steel-trap-jawed terriers, trying so hard to strangle themselves, and making their eyeballs protrude as they hung by their collars, tugging in the most insensate way at chains that would not break.