“Make it half-a-crown,” said he, “and you shall have him;” for he was anxious to get rid of Jubilee. He might begin to moult, or the paint might wear off; and then there might be mischief.
The boys consented to give half-a-crown, and took Jubilee away with them. How glad he was to get out of that shop! Surely better times were coming! He was once more in the hands of the aristocracy, and certainly they handled him much more gently than the street boys. They carried him to a big house in Belgravia, put him in an empty cage, and began to examine him closely. Then they took him out and turned up his feathers.
“I thought so,” said one: “I told you so when we were looking at him through the window. That fellow’s a regular old thief. It’s nothing but a common sparrow. Run and ask father to come and see him.”
The other boy soon returned with a kind-looking gentleman, who laughed when he saw Jubilee, and told the boys they were lucky to have caught a well-known thief and impostor. Then he sent for a cab, took the cage and the boys, and drove down to the street where the old man lived, taking up a policeman on the way. And in another half-hour Jubilee found himself at a police-station; he was put in a sunny window, and the paint partly washed off him, the old man was locked up in a cell, and the gentleman and the boys were to come next day and give evidence.
The next day Jubilee was brought into court in his cage. It was not very pleasant; for he was half yellow and half his natural brown, and all the people laughed at him when he was handed up to the magistrate to be looked at. But a kind-hearted policeman, who had taken care of him the evening before, and given him seeds and water, had pity on him, and took him out of court as soon as he had been looked at, and washed the paint quite off him, and put him back in his sunny window. The case was soon proved, and when the old man had been sent away to prison for obtaining money on false pretences, the policeman asked the boys if he might keep the bird, as it was only a sparrow, and his sick wife would be very glad of it to keep her company while he was out on his beat. The boys gladly let him have it, and Jubilee was once more carried off in his cage to a new residence.
This was a small two-storied house in Pimlico. The policeman carried him up-stairs to his wife who lay ill in bed.
“Ah, Harry dear,” said she, “I’m so glad to see you; I’ve been waiting so long for you. I thought the morning would never come to an end. And what have you got there?”
“Something to make the time go quicker for you,” said the policeman; and he put the cage down on his wife’s bed, and told her the story of the sparrow.
“Poor bird,” said she, “poor thing. I can feel for him, as I’m caged up too, and can’t get out into the fresh air. But thank you, Harry, for thinking of me. He’ll be a companion to me, these long dreary mornings. But what shall we call him?”
“Well,” said Harry, “I reckon he’s about two months old; and to-day’s the 20th of August; so that just about takes us back to Jubilee day. I think he must have been born very near about the Jubilee. Let us call him Jubilee.”