"Veronica," I said, "listen to me for a moment. If you were a little
bird--"
But she wasn't listening to me. She had held up the little wooden cage,
opened the clasp of the door and, with a rapt smile on her small shining
face, was watching the "frush" as he soared into the air with a sudden
burst of song.
We none of us spoke till he had vanished from sight. Then Veronica broke
the silence.
"It's all my very own plan," she said proudly. "I planned it all by myself.
An' all my birfdays I'm going to have one of that nasty man's frushes for a
present, and we'll all free come up here and let it out--always an' always
an' for ever an' ever--right up till I'm a hundred."
"Why stop at a hundred?" I murmured, recovering myself with an effort.
But I could not escape Kathleen's eye.
"I hope you feel small," it said.