“They will frighten the bird,” thought Toby; but they were kind to Uncle John because he had a pension.  Toby slept in a corner on the ground beside the baby, and when father and Mr. Hearn fought at nights he would wake up and watch and shiver; but when this happened it seemed to him that the baby was laughing at him, and he would pinch her to make her stop.  One night, when the men were fighting very fiercely and mother had fallen asleep on the table, Uncle John rose from his bed and began singing in a great voice.  It was a song Toby knew very well about Trafalgar’s Bay, but it frightened the two men a great deal because they thought Uncle John would be too mad to fetch the pension any more.  Next day he was quite well, however, and he and Toby found a large green caterpillar in the garden among the plants.

“This is a fact of great importance,” said Uncle John, stroking it with a little stick.  “It is a sign!”

Toby used to lie awake at nights after that and listen for the bird, but he only heard the clatter of feet on the pavement and the screaming of engines far away.

Later there came a new young woman to live in the cellar—­not a dark person, but a person you could see and speak to.  She patted Toby on the head; but when she saw the baby she caught it to her breast and cried over it, calling it pretty names.

At first father and Mr. Hearn were both very kind to her, and mother used to sit all day in the corner with burning eyes, but after a time the three used to laugh together at nights as before, and the woman would sit with her wet face and wait for the coming of the bird, with Toby and the baby and Uncle John, who was a queer one.

“All we have to do,” Uncle John would say, “is to keep the garden clean and tidy, and to water the plants every morning so that they may be very green.”  And Toby would go and whisper this to the baby, and she would stare at the ceiling with large, stupid eyes.

There came a time when Toby was very sick, and he lay all day in his corner wondering about wonder.  Sometimes the room in which he lay became so small that he was choked for lack of air, sometimes it was so large that he screamed out because he felt lonely.  He could not see the dark people then at all, but only Uncle John and the woman, who told him in whispers that her name was “Mummie.”  She called him Sonny, which is a very pretty name, and when Toby heard it he felt a tickling in his sides which he knew to be gladness.  Mummie’s face was wet and warm and soft, and she was very fond of kissing.  Every morning Uncle John would lift Toby up and show him the garden, and Toby would slip out of his arms and walk among the trees and plants.  And the place would grow bigger and bigger until it was all the world, and Toby would lose himself; amongst the tangle of trees and flowers and creepers.  He would see butterflies there and tame animals, and the sky was full of birds of all colours, ugly and beautiful; but he knew that none of these was the bird, because their voices were only sweet.  Sometimes he showed these wonders to a little boy called Toby, who held his hand and called him Uncle John, sometimes he showed them to his mummie and he himself was Toby; but always when he came back he found himself lying in Uncle John’s arms, and, weary from his walk, would fall into a pleasant dreamless sleep.