The streets there were small and stuffy and ugly, and
crowded with printers' boys and binders' girls coming out from
work; and these stared so hard at the pretty red coats and caps of
the sisters that they wished they had gone some other way. And the
printers and binders made very personal remarks, advising Jane to
get her hair cut, and inquiring where Anthea had bought that hat.
Jane and Anthea scorned to reply, and Cyril and Robert found that
they were hardly a match for the rough crowd. They could think of
nothing nasty enough to say. They turned a corner sharply, and
then Anthea pulled Jane into an archway, and then inside a door;
Cyril and Robert quickly followed, and the jeering crowd passed by
without seein them.
Anthea drew a long breath.
'How awful!' she said. 'I didn't know there were such people,
except in books.'
'It was a bit thick; but it's partly you girls' fault, coming out
in those flashy coats.'
'We thought we ought to, when we were going out with the Phoenix,'
said Jane; and the bird said, 'Quite right, too'--and incautiously
put out his head to give her a wink of encouragement.
And at the same instant a dirty hand reached through the grim
balustrade of the staircase beside them and clutched the Phoenix,
and a hoarse voice said--
'I say, Urb, blowed if this ain't our Poll parrot what we lost.
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