“If you cannot talk sensibly, Chumbley, pray be silent!” said Hilton, in a low, angry whisper. “You are like a big boy more than a man!”
“Go on, old fellow!” said Chumbley, coolly. “If ever I marry, which isn’t likely, I daresay I shall have a woman with a tongue like an arrow. What a chance she will have to shoot sharp words at my thick hide!”
“Will you talk sense for a few moments before this woman goes?”
“Lady.”
“Well, lady, then! I want to try and devise some plan for getting away.”
“What’s the hurry?” said Chumbley. “We’re caught and caged, and I have always noticed that the birds that are trapped and caged are of two kinds.”
“Is there much of this moral sermon to come?”
“No,” said Chumbley, good-humouredly, “not much. It seems tiresome to you because you are standing. Sit down, man, and listen. I feel quite like an Eastern speaker of parables. It is the atmosphere, I suppose. I was saying that the birds that are caught are of two kinds—those that take it coolly and those that don’t. Those that don’t keep on beating their breasts against the bars, and knocking their feathers off in the most insane way, till they die, looking exceedingly bare and uncomfortable; while those that take it coolly sit upon the perches, set up their feathers till they look nice and plump, and keep on saying ‘chiswick’ except when they stop to eat their seed.”
“And, most profound moralist, the restless, brave-hearted birds that breast the bars are the truest,” cried Hilton. “I would not be so spiritless and craven for worlds.”
“Stuff!” said Chumbley. “Nobody’s going to wring your neck and put you in a pie; then it would be uncomfortable. The Princess only wants you to sing. I say, I think I shall ask her if she means to give us the seed that is becoming necessary in the shape of dinner.”