“D’you see anything for Mr. Vivian, dear Eureka? Even the littlest thing would be welcomed.”
Eureka stared upon the Prophet, who began to feel very nervous.
“There’s something round his head,” she remarked, with her usual almost sacred earnestness.
The Prophet mechanically put up his hands, like a man anxious to interfere with the assiduous attentions of a swarm of bees.
“Something right round his head.”
“Is it a halo?” asked Miss Minerva.
“Is it a Lincoln & Bennet, mother?” cried Mr. Moses. “One of the shiny ones—twenty-one bob, and twenty-five-and-six if you want a kid lining?”
“No; it’s like some sort of bird.”
“‘I heard the owl beneath my eaves complaining,’” chirped Mr. Moses, taking two or three high notes in a delicate tenor voice. “‘I looked forth—great Scot! How it was raining!’ Is it an owl, mother? Ask it to screech to Briskin.”
“It is no owl,” said Eureka to the Prophet. “It is a sparrow—your bird.”