“Into your mill?” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the woodpigeon; “the little mill which is inside me.”
Tommy Smith was getting more and more puzzled. What could the woodpigeon mean? “And yet he is such a nice bird,” he said to himself. “I don’t think he would tell stories.”
“I see that you don’t understand me,” said the woodpigeon; “so, if you like, I will explain it all to you.”
“Oh, I should so like to know!” said Tommy Smith.
So the woodpigeon gave a gentle coo, and began to tell him all about it. “Yes,” he said, “I have a mill inside me, and everything that I eat goes into it to get ground up.”
“Why, then, you are a miller,” said Tommy Smith.
“In a way, I am,” said the woodpigeon; “for I own a mill. But then, you know, a miller lives inside his mill, but my mill is inside me.”
“I should so like to see it,” said Tommy Smith.
“You never can do that,” said the woodpigeon in an alarmed tone of voice; “for you would have to kill me first, and that would be a most shocking thing to do. But it is there, all the same, though you can’t see it, and it is called the gizzard.”