is it?"

Lancelot answered briskly, "Mary Ann's. She asked to be allowed to
keep it here. It seems it won't sing in her attic; it pines away."

"And do you believe that?"

"Why not? It doesn't sing much even here."

"Let me look at it--ah, it's a plain Norwich yellow. If you wanted a
singing canary you should have come to me, I'd have given you one 'made
in Germany'--one of our patents--they train them to sing tunes, and
that puts up the price."

"Thank you, but this one disturbs me sufficiently."

"Then why do you put up with it?"

"Why do I put up with that Christmas number supplement over the
mantel-piece? It's part of the furniture. I was asked to let it be
here, and I couldn't be rude."

"No, it's not in your nature. What a bore it must be to feed it! Let
me see, I suppose you give it canary seed biscuits--I hope you don't
give it butter."

"Don't be an ass!" roared Lancelot. "You don't imagine I bother my
head whether it eats butter or--or marmalade."

"Who feeds it then?"

"Mary Ann, of course."

"She comes in and feeds it?"

"Certainly."

"Several times a day?"

"I suppose so."

"Lancelot," said Peter solemnly, "Mary Ann's mashed on you."

Lancelot shrank before Peter's remark as a burglar from a policeman's
bull's-eye. The bull's-eye seemed to cast a new light on Mary Ann,
too, but he felt too unpleasantly dazzled to consider that for the
moment; his whole thought was to get out of the line of light.

"Nonsense!" he answered; "why I'm hardly ever in when she feeds it, and
I believe it eats all day long--gets supplied in the morning like a
coal-scuttle. Besides, she comes in to dust and all that when she
pleases. And I do wish you wouldn't use that word 'mashed.' I loathe
it."

Indeed, he writhed under the thought of being coupled with Mary Ann.
The thing sounded so ugly--so squalid. In the actual, it was not so
unpleasant, but looked at from the outside--unsympathetically--it was
hopelessly vulgar, incurably plebeian. He shuddered.

"I don't know," said Peter. "It's a very expressive word, is 'mashed.'
But I will make allowance for your poetical feelings and give up the
word--except in its literal sense, of course. I'm sure you wouldn't
object to mashing a music-publisher!"

Lancelot laughed with false heartiness. "Oh, but if I'm to write those
popular ballads, you say he'll become my best friend."

"Of course he will," cried Peter, eagerly sniffing at the red her