'
'There are plenty of nasty words just that length,' said Jane; but
every one else said 'Hush!' And then they opened the window and
shouted the seven lines as loud as they could, and the Phoenix said
all the words with them, except 'lovely', and when they came to
that it looked down and coughed bashfully.
The rain hesitated a moment and then went away.
'There's true politeness,' said the Phoenix, and the next moment it
was perched on the window-ledge, opening and shutting its radiant
wings and flapping out its golden feathers in such a flood of
glorious sunshine as you sometimes have at sunset in autumn time.
People said afterwards that there had not been such sunshine in
December for years and years and years.
'And now,' said the bird, 'we will go out into the city, and you
shall take me to see one of my temples.'
'Your temples?'
'I gather from the carpet that I have many temples in this land.'
'I don't see how you CAN find anything out from it,' said Jane: 'it
never speaks.'
'All the same, you can pick up things from a carpet,' said the
bird; 'I've seen YOU do it. And I have picked up several pieces of
information in this way. That papyrus on which you showed me my
picture--I understand that it bears on it the name of the street of
your city in which my finest temple stands, with my image graved in
stone and in metal over against its portal.
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