One of these fires, crackling in the grate of one of those dining-rooms which look fondly out on the river and tolerantly across to Battersea, was being watched by the critical eye of an aged canary.  The cage in which this bird sat was hung in the middle of the bow-window.  It contained three perches, and also a pendent hoop.  The tray that was its floor had just been cleaned and sanded.  In the embrasure to the right was a fresh supply of hemp-seed; in the embrasure to the left the bath-tub had just been refilled with clear water.  Stuck between the bars was a large sprig of groundsel.  Yet, though all was thus in order, the bird did not eat nor drink, nor did he bathe.  With his back to Battersea, and his head sunk deep between his little sloping shoulders, he watched the fire.  The windows had for a while been opened, as usual, to air the room for him; and the fire had not yet mitigated the chill.  It was not his custom to bathe at so inclement an hour; and his appetite for food and drink, less keen than it had once been, required to be whetted by example—­he never broke his fast before his master and mistress broke theirs.  Time had been when, for sheer joy in life, he fluttered from perch to perch, though there were none to watch him, and even sang roulades, though there were none to hear.  He would not do these things nowadays save at the fond instigation of Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Berridge.  The housemaid who ministered to his cage, the parlourmaid who laid the Berridges’ breakfast table, sometimes tried to incite him to perform for their own pleasure.  But the sense of caste, strong in his protuberant little bosom, steeled him against these advances.

While the breakfast-table was being laid, he heard a faint tap against the window-pane.  Turning round, he perceived on the sill a creature like to himself, but very different—­a creature who, despite the pretensions of a red waistcoat in the worst possible taste, belonged evidently to the ranks of the outcast and the disinherited.  In previous winters the sill had been strewn every morning with bread-crumbs.  This winter, no bread-crumbs had been vouchsafed; and the canary, though he did not exactly understand why this was so, was glad that so it was.  He had felt that his poor relations took advantage of the Berridges’ kindness.  Two or three of them, as pensioners, might not have been amiss.  But they came in swarms, and they gobbled their food in a disgusting fashion, not trifling coquettishly with it as birds should.  The reason for this, the canary knew, was that they were hungry; and of that he was sorry.  He hated to think how much destitution there was in the world; and he could not help thinking about it when samples of it were thrust under his notice.  That was the principal reason why he was glad that the window-sill was strewn no more and seldom visited.

He would much rather not have seen this solitary applicant.  The two eyes fixed on his made him feel very uncomfortable.  And yet, for fear of seeming to be outfaced, he did not like to look away.