lobsters in their windows, and their sorrow did not seem nearly
so impossible to bear as it had done in the best parlour at No.
300, Fitzroy Street.

Presently, by some wonderful chance turn of Robert's (who had
been voted Captain because the girls thought it would be good for
him-- and indeed he thought so himself--and of course Cyril
couldn't vote against him because it would have looked like a
mean jealousy), they came into the little interesting
criss-crossy streets that held the most interesting shops of
all--the shops where live things were sold. There was one shop
window entirely filled with cages, and all sorts of beautiful
birds in them. The children were delighted till they remembered
how they had once wished for wings themselves, and had had
them--and then they felt how desperately unhappy anything with
wings must be if it is shut up in a cage and not allowed to fly.

'It must be fairly beastly to be a bird in a cage,' said Cyril.
'Come on!'

They went on, and Cyril tried to think out a scheme for making
his fortune as a gold-digger at Klondyke, and then buying all the
caged birds in the world and setting them free. Then they came
to a shop that sold cats, but the cats were in cages, and the
children could not help wishing someone would buy all the cats
and put them on hearthrugs, which are the proper places for cats.
And there was the dog-shop, and that was not a happy thing to
look at either, because all the dogs were chained or caged, and
all the dogs, big and little, looked at the four children with
sad wistful eyes and wagged beseeching tails as if they were