Sarah Brown opened the office window, and the air of the office began at once to dance with life and the noise of children and birds.  She thought perhaps these were magic noises, for she heard them so clearly.  She broke her second sandwich upon the window-sill, and the sparrows crossed the street and stood on the area railing in a row below her, all speaking at once in an effort to convey to her the fact that a retreat on her part would be tactful.

The sparrow obviously buys all his clothes ready-made, probably at Jumble Sales, and he always seems to choose clothes made for a stouter bird.  There is no reason why he should never look chic; he has a slimmer figure than the bullfinch, for instance, who always manages to look so well-tailored.  It is just arrogance, pure Londonism, on the part of the sparrow, just that impudent socialistic spirit that makes it so difficult for us to reform the Naughty Poor.

Sarah Brown retreated one step.  “I’m not going farther away.  Either you eat that sandwich with me looking on, or you leave it.”

The sparrows whispered together for a moment, saying to each other, “You go first.”  They obviously knew that it was a charity window-sill, and were afraid Sarah Brown might intend to rebuke them for not shutting their beaks while chewing, or for neglecting to put any crumbs into the Savings Bank.  But after a minute one sparrow moistened his beak and came....  He ate, they all ate, and did not seek to escape as the door of the office opened and the witch came in.  She went straight to the window and picked up from among the stooping sparrows a piece of the broken sandwich, and ate it.  The Dog David was making sure that there was no surviving crumb on the floor to tell the tale of his mother’s sentimental weakness.  Almost instantly, therefore, that sandwich was but a memory, a fading taste in about twenty beaks and two mouths.  But still the window stood open, and the air danced, and the white reflections of the ship-like clouds lay on the oilcloth floor.

Sarah Brown in the meanwhile, disregarding the witch, had returned to the index, and had taken from its drawer a notification form.  In the space given for Name of Case she had written in her irreproachable printing hand: 

“Charity, Cautionary Case, 12 Pan Street, Brown Borough.  With reference to the above case, I have to report that it seems unsatisfactory.  There are indeed grave suspicions that the above name is only an alias, the address being also probably false, for the genuine Charity’s place of origin is said to be the home rather than the office.  The present registrar is at a loss to identify with certainty this case.  It would seem to be one of the Habits that haunt the world, collecting Kudos under assumed names....”

“It puzzles me,” said the witch, looking out of the window, “why one never sees two birds collide.  If there were as many witches in the air as there are birds, I bet you twopence there would be constant accidents.  Do you think they have any sort of a rule of the road, or do they indicate with their beaks—­”