y, and that I
mustn't grumble at it, which, of course, I promised I wouldn't.

So when we set off late one hot summer evening, on our long journey, I
carried carefully, a queer-looking package in one hand. It was the cage,
all covered up in a sort of brown holland bag, which contained my
beloved Frise-tete and Coo-coo.

They _were_ a great worry. I often wished I had left them at home, I can
assure you. We had to travel two nights, and most part of two or three
days before we got quite to our journey's end, though we stopped two or
three times on the way, and it was so hot that we felt very tired and
uncomfortable, and it was not easy to keep good-humoured even without
the birds! Very often I had to sit with the cage on my knee if the
railway carriage happened to be rather low, and there was not room for
it up beside the cloaks and rugs. And then I had to have water in a
bottle to keep the poor things supplied, and very often it spilt all
over, and so did the seed, and our fellow passengers looked very cross
at me. And sometimes at the stations, the guards and railway people
wouldn't let me pass without undoing all the cover and everything to see
what the wonderful bundle was. Oh, we were very glad when we found
ourselves at last safe at the place we were to stay at! It was a very
old-fashioned little town, but it was almost like being in the country.
There were such beautiful walks all about, and from the end of every
street one could see the fields and trees, so you see it wasn't a bit
like a town.

We had rooms in a very nice funny old hotel. Mamma said it was quite
like an old-fashioned English inn, such as they used to be in the
coaching days. The ceilings were low, and the staircase very wide, and
the furniture _so_ old-fashioned. We had a nice large sitting-room, and
two bed-rooms out of it, and on the wide window-sill of our bedroom I
established Frise-tete and Coo-coo. They were very sensible, poor
things, they only fluttered and fussed about for a short time, and then
settled down quite contentedly, which, I am sure, was very good
behaviour after being so much covered up.

[Illustration]

I could tell you lots of stories about our life in the old German town,
but I must remember that this story is to be all about the canaries. It
was beautiful sunny weather, and they spent nearly their whole time at
the open window--I used only to bring them in at night. And every
morning I cleaned the cage out nicely, a