“Double pneumonia--caught it getting his feet wet, after some stray, I’ll be bound. I’m nursing him. There has to be some one with him all the time.” He was lying very still when I went up, with the sunlight falling across the foot of his bed, and, sure enough, the bullfinch perching on his pillow. In that high fever he looked brighter than ever. He was not exactly delirious, yet not exactly master of his thoughts. “Mr. Jackson! He’ll be here soon. Mr. Jackson! He’ll do it for me. I can ask him, if I die. A funny woman. I don’t want to eat; I’m not a great eater--I want my breath, that’s all.” At sound of his voice the bullfinch fluttered off the pillow and flew round and round the room, as if alarmed at something new in the tones that were coming from its master. Then he seemed to recognise me. “I think I’m going to die,” he said; “I’m very weak. It’s lucky, there’s nobody to mind. If only he’d come soon. I wish”--and he raised himself with feeble excitement--“I wish you’d take that wire off the window; I want my cats. She turned them out. I want him to promise me to take them, and bully-boy, and feed them with my money, when I’m dead.” Seeing that excitement was certainly worse for him than cats, I took the wire off. He fell back, quiet at once; and presently, first one and then another cat came stealing in, till there were four or five seated against the walls. The moment he ceased to speak the bullfinch, too, came back to his pillow. His eyes looked most supernaturally bright, staring out of his little, withered-up old face at the sunlight playing on his bed; he said just audibly: “Did you ever see anything more wonderful than that sunlight? It’s really marvellous!” After that he fell into a sort of doze or stupor. And I continued to sit there in the window, relieved, but rather humiliated, that he had not asked me to take care of his cats and bullfinch. Presently there came the sound of a motor-car in the little street below. And almost at once the landlady appeared. For such an abrupt woman, she entered very softly. “Here he is,” she whispered. I went out and found a gentleman, perhaps sixty years of age, in a black coat, buff waistcoat, gold watch-chain, light trousers, patent-leather boots, and a wonderfully shining hat. His face was plump and red, with a glossy grey moustache; indeed, he seemed to shine everywhere, save in the eyes, which were of a dull and somewhat liverish hue. “Mr. Jackson?” “The same. How is the little old chap?” Opening the door of the next room, which I knew was always empty, I beckoned Mr. Jackson in. “He’s really very ill; I’d better tell you what he wants to see you about.” He looked at me with that air of “You can’t get at me--whoever you may be,” which belongs to the very successful. “Right-o!” he said. “Well?” I described the situation. “He seems to think,” I ended, “that you’ll be kind enough to charge yourself with his strays, in case he should die.”