Attached to our cottage was an out-house which ran flush along the side of Beacon Street, fencing off our bit of a garden from the road and an adjacent tenement; and this out-house, mother, who was of an inventive nature, with a strong proclivity for money-making, had converted into a shop for the sale of all sorts of birds, both foreign and native born, and pigeons, in addition to sundry specimens of the rarer species of poultry. Mother said she had been forced into the trade from the necessity of her having to do `something for a living' after grandfather's death, on account of her having us two children to keep, as well as herself, on only the allotment pay of father, who was away at sea at the time; but, in a weak moment she once confessed she had started the bird-keeping business more for the sake of having her hands employed than anything else, she not being partial to needlework, like most west-country women, while she was particularly fond of birds! Not only that, she was certainly accustomed to their feathery ways, and learned in the art of their breeding and bringing up, even from the nest; for Jenny and I could bear witness to having seen her often enough poking pap with a stick down the outstretched throats of gaping young blackbirds and thrushes as soon as they had sufficiently developed beaks to open, and coddling up shivering little canaries and larklets in flannel before the fire when their proper parents would not attend to their infantile needs--mother tenderly feeding them with the point of a camel's-hair brush dipped in egg paste and weak wine and water before they were old enough even to `peep' or flutter their nascent little wings. Bye-and-bye, when my sister got big enough, she took charge of all this part of the business, and saved mother a world of trouble, as she thankfully acknowledged, without being a bit jealous of her greater success with the fledgelings; for Jenny handled the little things as tenderly as if she were a canary herself, and was so fortunate in her treatment of them, medical and otherwise, that she never lost even the most delicate of her bird baby patients, nursing them through their various ailments, and rearing them triumphantly up to the full perfection of their plumage and song. You should only have seen her amongst them of a morning when I had the job of cleaning out their cages, while Jenny gave them all fresh food and water! They did not pay much attention to me, save to flutter a bit as I moved them about, and especially when I put my hand between the bars of their little wooden prisons; but with Jenny the case was very different.