“That’s him,” she said; “and I wish it wasn’t, with his dirty cats. Do you want him?” “I do.” “He lives at the top.” Then, with a grudging apology: “I can’t help it; he tries me--he’s very trying.” “I am sure he is.” She looked at me. The longing to talk that comes over those who answer bells all day, and the peculiar Scottish desire to justify oneself, rose together in that face which seemed all promontories dried by an east wind. “Ah!” she said; “he is. I don’t deny his heart; but he’s got no sense of anything. Goodness knows what he hasn’t got up there. I wonder I keep him. An old man like that ought to know better; half-starving himself to feed them.” She paused, and her eyes, that had a cold and honest glitter, searched me closely. “If you’re going up,” she said, “I hope you’ll give him good advice. He never lets me in. I wonder I keep him.” There were three flights of stairs, narrow, clean, and smelling of oilcloth. Selecting one of two doors at random, I knocked. His silvery head and bright, pinched face were cautiously poked out. “Ah!” he said; “I thought it might be her!” The room, which was fairly large, had a bare floor with little on it save a camp-bed and chest of drawers with jug and basin. A large bird-cage on the wall hung wide open. The place smelt of soap and a little of beasts and birds. Into the walls, whitewashed over a green wall-paper which stared through in places, were driven nails with their heads knocked off, onto which bits of wood had been spiked, so that they stood out as bird-perches high above the ground. Over the open window a piece of wire netting had been fixed. A little spirit-stove and an old dressing-gown hanging on a peg completed the accoutrements of a room which one entered with a certain diffidence. He had not exaggerated. Besides the new cat, there were three other cats and four birds, all--save one, a bullfinch--invalids. The cats kept close to the walls, avoiding me, but wherever my little old friend went, they followed him with their eyes. The birds were in the cage, except the bullfinch, which had perched on his shoulder. “How on earth,” I said, “do you manage to keep cats and birds in one room?” “There is danger,” he answered, “but I have not had a disaster yet. Till their legs or wings are mended, they hardly come out of the cage; and after that they keep up on my perches. But they don’t stay long, you know, when they’re once well. That wire is only put over the window while they’re mending; it’ll be off to-morrow, for this lot.” “And then they’ll go?” “Yes. The sparrow first, and then the two thrushes.” “And this fellow?” “Ask him,” he said. “Would _you_ go, bully?” But the bullfinch did not deign to answer. “And were all those cats, too, in trouble?” “Yes,” he said. “They wouldn’t want me if they weren’t.”