It was different though with the dogs, since they snapped openly at trousers’ legs, out of which garments, they had been known to take pieces, in spite of a general reputation for harmlessness.
The pinky cockatoos also possessed a firmness of beak that was by no means pleasant if they could manage a snip. But once past the door, and you were pretty safe amidst the wonders which met your eye: a couple of knowing-looking magpies gazing at you sideways; a jay, the business of whose life seemed to be to make two hops with the regularity of a pendulum; squirrels and white mice, which spun round their cages and fidgeted and scratched; a doleful owl blinking in a corner; a large hawk, which glared with wicked eyes from cage to cage, as if asking who would die next to make him a meal, as he stood on one leg, and smelt nasty, in another corner; squealing parroquets and twittering avadavats; bullfinches which professed to pipe, but did not; and a white hare, fast changing its hue, which did tattoo once on the side of its hutch.
And even when you had seen these, you had not seen all, for in every available or unavailable place there was something stowed, living or dead.
Love-birds cuddled up together, budgerigars whistled and scratched, while in one large wire cage, apparently quite content, about fifty rats scurried about or sat in heaps, with their long, worm-like tails hanging out in all directions from between the wires, as if they were fishing for food, and snatched at the chance of getting a bite. One sage grey fellow sat up in a corner, in an attitude evidently copied from a feline enemy, whom he imitated still further as he busied himself over his toilet, pawing and smoothing his whiskers, like an old buck of a rat as he undoubtedly was, and happily ignorant that before many hours were past he would be sold with his fellows by the dozen, and called upon to utter his last squeak while helping to display the gameness of one of the steel-trap-jawed terriers, trying so hard to strangle themselves, and making their eyeballs protrude as they hung by their collars, tugging in the most insensate way at chains that would not break.
And here, amidst trill, whistle, screech, squeak, coo, snarl, and bark—amongst birdseed, German paste, rat and mouse traps, cages, new and secondhand, besides the other wonders which helped to form D. Wragg’s stock-in-trade, was Patty Pellet, whose bright, bird-like voice vied with those of the warblers around, and whose soft, plump form looked as tender, as lovable, and as innocent as that of one of the creamy doves that came to her call, perched upon her shoulder, and—oh, happy dove!—fed from the two ruddy, bee-stung, honeyed lips, that pouted and offered a pea or a crumb of bread to the softly cooing bird, which seemed to gaze lovingly at the bright face, the brighter for the dark framing of misery, vice, and wretchedness by which it was here surrounded.
Patty was enjoying herself that morning, seeing, as she called it, to Janet’s pets; for in spite of the vileness of the neighbourhood, she was often here, in consequence of her strange friendship for the adopted daughter of Monsieur Canau, who lodged on D. Wragg’s first floor. The acquaintanceship had originated in the visits of the Frenchman and his ward to the house in Duplex Street in quest of violin-strings, and through similarity of tastes, had ripened into affection between the girls, in spite of something like dislike evinced at first by Jared Pellet, and something more than dislike displayed by his wife, who, however, ended by yielding, and treating in the most motherly fashion the object of Patty’s regard, and of late many pleasant evenings had been spent by Canau and Janet in Jared Pellet’s modest parlour, on which occasions the little house resounded with wondrous strains, until the children were so wakeful that they rose in revolt, and the instruments had to be silenced.
Patty’s friend had just left her visitor and gone up-stairs in answer to a summons from Monsieur Canau, while the proprietor of all this wealth sat in his back room, a pleasant museum of stuffed departed stock-in-trade. He was smoking his pipe, and spelling over the morning’s paper, taking great interest in the last garrotting case—merely called, in those days, a violent assault—so that Patty, left alone, was enjoying herself, as was her custom, in dispensing seed, red sand, chickweed, and groundsel, and other food—with water unlimited—to the hungry many.
“Have you brought me anythink to do for you, my dovey?” said a voice, and a round red fat face appeared from somewhere, being thrust into the shop between a parrot’s cage, and a bunch of woolly and mossy balls, such as are supplied to young birds about to set up housekeeping.
“Nothing this morning, Mrs Winks,” trilled Patty.
“Not nothink, my dovey? no collars, nor hankychys, nor cuffs? The water’s bilin’, and the soap and soda waitin’, so don’t say as you’ve brought nothink as I can wash.”