“Then I’ll go into that shop opposite,” said Phoena, “and ask if they can tell me whether Tubbs—yes, that is the right name,” she added, going backwards on the narrow pavement in order to read the description of himself and his performances over Jonas’s door—“whether Tubbs does not keep a caged thrush.”
Therewith Phoena darted into a small shop, which was evidently the “Harrod’s Stores” of Playden, offering a miscellaneous assortment of wares for sale, varying from bootlaces to bacon, and from mouse-traps to smart bonnets.
“Please can you tell me,” asked Phoena of the woman at the counter, “if there isn’t generally a bird-cage hanging outside Tubbs’s door?”
“To be sure, can’t you see it for yourself, Miss?” was the reply, and Mrs. Bowles ducked her head under a string of brilliant handkerchiefs to secure a better view of her opposite neighbour’s door.
“But it’s not there to-day,” said Phoena.
“No, more it is,” cried Mrs. Bowles. “Well, I never! ’Twasn’t more than an hour ago that I saw it there with my own eyes, with a cabbage leaf laid on the top, same as they always put over in the heat. Maybe they’ve just taken it inside, whilst the day’s at its hottest.”
“Thank you,” said Phoena, and without noticing the woman’s disappointment at her abrupt departure, she flew back to the others.
“That wicked old man must have guessed that we were coming,” she said, “for the woman in the shop says that the cage was put out to-day.”
“I wish we had come earlier,” said Faith, “for it makes it much more difficult to do anything now.”
“Nonsense,” cried Jack, “it’ll be all the more exciting. Now we must go in and make the old beggar hand up the bird or show us where it is.”