"Mother said father would be angry; he knows how many flower-pots we have. So I used my money-box."
"But you would rather have a flowerpot, Dan?"
"I should have liked a flower-pot above all things; it seems more natural for a bird. Something might grow out of it; something that Golden Cloud would like to know is above it, if it was only a blade of grass."
Joshua ran out of Dan's room and returned in a very few minutes with a flowerpot with mignonette growing in it. He was almost breathless with excitement.
"It is mine, Dan," he said, "and it is yours. I bought it with my own money; and it shall be Golden Cloud's coffin."
"Kiss me, Jo," said Dan.
Joshua kissed him, and then carefully lifted the flower-roots from the pot, and placed Golden Cloud in the soft mould beneath. A few tears fell from Dan's eyes into the flowerpot coffin, as he looked for the last time upon the form of his pet canary. Then Joshua replaced the flower-roots, and arranged the earth, and Golden Cloud was ready for burial.
"Play something, Jo," said Dan.
Joshua took his accordion in his hands, and played a slow solemn march; and the birds, directed by Dan, hopped gravely round the flower-pot, the tomtit keeping its eye sternly fixed upon the rebellious blackbird, expressing in the look an unmistakable determination to put an instant stop to the slightest exhibition of indecency.
"I don't know where to bury it," said Dan, when the ceremony was completed. "Ellen has been trying to pick out a flagstone in the yard, but she made her fingers bleed, and then couldn't move it. And if it was buried there, the stone would have to be trodden down, and the flowers in the coffin couldn't grow."