One of the canaries suddenly broke into a rich trill of song, as if to add his personal expression of surprise.
"Now there!" Mr. Punt exclaimed, shaking a podgy forefinger at him. "There's the bird as give all the trouble and cause words 'tween me and Maria, 'e did. 'Artz Mountain roller, that bird is. Beeutiful 'is note, ain't it, Sir?"
There really was a deep full tone, distantly suggestive of a nightingale's, that favourably distinguished the bird's song from the canary's usual acute treble.
"'I'm doubting, Maria,' I say to 'er," Mr. Punt resumed. "No longer ago than this very morning I say it—'I'm doubting whether I did ought to call that 'ere bird a 'Artz Mountain roller,' I say to 'er—me meaning, o' course, as the 'Artz Mountains being, as some thinks, in Germany, that pussons wouldn't so much as go to look at a canary as called 'isself a 'Artz Mountain bird, as it might be a German bird, for all as 'e'd never a-bin no nearer Germany than the Royal Road, Chelsea, not never since 'e chip 'is little shell, 'e 'aven't.
"So I ask 'er the question, doubting like, and she up and say, all saucy as a jay-bird, 'Why, certainly you didn't ought to call 'im so,' she say.
"'Question is, Maria,' I says, 'in that case what did I ought to call 'im?'
"'And I can tell yer that too, Dad,' she say—Maria did. 'You didn't ought to call 'im 'Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller. That's the way to call 'im,' she says—impident little 'ussy! But there—what's in a name, as the white blackbird said when 'e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry? Still, 'e weren't running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when 'e ask such a question as that 'ere. There's a good deal in 'ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig neither, if you want to pass 'im on to a customer in a honest way o' trade."
I assured Mr. Punt I had not a doubt of it.
"But I shall be a-practisin' my haitches, Sir," he promised me, as I went out with the canary seed which I had called to purchase—"practise 'em 'ard, I shall. It's what I ain't a-got at the present moment—'a fine ear for the haspirate.' Beeutiful expression that, Sir, if you'll excuse me sayin' so. But I don't see no reason as a man mightn't 'ope to acquire it, 'im practising constant and careful—same as a pusson can learn a bullfinch to pipe ''Ome, sweet 'Ome.' That haitch is a funny letter, but it's a letter as I shall practise. Still, haitches or no haitches," he concluded, with a profound sigh, "I wish as I knowed 'ow I could set about coming it over that 'ere one-legged widder lidy at Putney what 'ave the two great hauk's eggs."
Out of the dusty twilight in the far end of the shop Mrs. Punt's eye gleamed balefully.