'Certainly—a chevron between three choughs. The crest a Cornish chough. Though, I protest, I have not the smallest idea what the bird is—whether it exist, or is extinct as the dodo, or fabulous as the wyvern.'
'But I know it,' said Winefred.
'Martlets have, I believe, no feet,' said Mrs. Jones.
'But these have legs and beaks of sealing-wax scarlet,' said Winefred. 'Otherwise they are as black as ravens. They are clever birds and build in our cliffs. We had one about a year ago, but a cat got at it. He was tame and loved to be stroked and caressed and talked to. He would run up a ladder like a squirrel. But oh! he was mischievous, once he got at mother's box——'
'Do you mean your poor deceased mother's jewel-case, or only the workbox of your nurse?' asked the widow.
'I mean where were the tapes and pins and buttons,' answered Winefred, colouring.
'Really,' said the young man, 'I protest that you make me desirous to see one of these birds. Conceive my ignorance in not knowing what a chough was, and yet bearing three of them on my shield and one on my helm.'
'It would be pure,' said Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, 'to have one, tame, in the square garden. I suppose that it would remain there, were the wing clipped. But there are cats.'
'Oh!' exclaimed Winefred, 'our bird would have been able to keep away from the cat if it had not been ill, but it had swallowed a brass thimble and was heavy and drooping. If you had it in the house, nothing would content it but to trip upstairs to the very garret.'