The phrase took the little man’s fancy wonderfully.  “That’s it, Sir,” he exclaimed, beaming up delightedly at me.  “You’ve ’it it!  Done it in one, you ’ave.  ’Fine ear for the haspirate’—­that’s what my darter Maria ’ave and what I, for one, ’ave not.  I’m not above confessing of it; ’tain’t given to all of us to ’ave everything, as the ant said to the helephant when ’e was boasting about ’is trunk.  Some there is as ain’t got no ear for music—­same as Joe Mangles, the grocer down the street, as ’as caught a heavy cold in ’is ’ead with taking ’is ’at off every time as ’e ’ears ‘It’s a long long way to Tipperary.’  Why, I’ve knowed men,” said Mr. Punt, in the manner of one who works himself up to an almost incredible climax—­“I’ve knowed men as couldn’t tell the difference between a linnet’s note and a goldfinch.”

“Astonishing,” I said.

One of the canaries suddenly broke into a rich trill of song, as if to add his personal expression of surprise.

“Now there!” Mr. Punt exclaimed, shaking a podgy forefinger at him.  “There’s the bird as give all the trouble and cause words ’tween me and Maria, ’e did.  ’Artz Mountain roller, that bird is.  Beeutiful ’is note, ain’t it, Sir?”

There really was a deep full tone, distantly suggestive of a nightingale’s, that favourably distinguished the bird’s song from the canary’s usual acute treble.

“‘I’m doubting, Maria,’ I say to ’er,” Mr. Punt resumed.  “No longer ago than this very morning I say it—­’I’m doubting whether I did ought to call that ’ere bird a ‘Artz Mountain roller,’ I say to ’er—­me meaning, o’ course, as the ’Artz Mountains being, as some thinks, in Germany, that pussons wouldn’t so much as go to look at a canary as called ’isself a ’Artz Mountain bird, as it might be a German bird, for all as ’e’d never a-bin no nearer Germany than the Royal Road, Chelsea, not never since ’e chip ’is little shell, ’e ’aven’t.

“So I ask ’er the question, doubting like, and she up and say, all saucy as a jay-bird, ’Why, certainly you didn’t ought to call ‘im so,’ she say.

“‘Question is, Maria,’ I says, ’in that case what did I ought to call ‘im?’

“‘And I can tell yer that too, Dad,’ she say—­Maria did.  ’You didn’t ought to call ’im ’Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller.  That’s the way to call ‘im,’ she says—­impident little ’ussy!  But there—­what’s in a name, as the white blackbird said when ’e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry?  Still, ’e weren’t running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when ’e ask such a question as that ’ere.  There’s a good deal in ’ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig neither, if you want to pass ’im on to a customer in a honest way o’ trade.”

I assured Mr. Punt I had not a doubt of it.