meant that she wanted Ricky-ticky to think her nice, or whether she
wanted to think Ricky-ticky nice. After all, it came to the same
thing; for to Poppy the peculiar charm of Ricky-ticky was his
innocence.

The clock on St. Pancras church struck half-past eleven; in his
hanging cage in the front room, behind his yellow gauze curtain,
Poppy's canary woke out of his first sleep. He untucked his head from
under his wing and chirrupped drowsily.

"Oh, dicky," said Poppy, "it's time you were in your little bed!"

He did not take the hint. He was intent on certain movements of
Poppy's fingers and the tip of her tongue concerned in the making of
cigarettes.

He was gazing into her face as if it held for him the secret of the
world. And that look embarrassed her. It had all the assurance of age
and all the wonder of youth in it. Poppy's eyes were trained to look
out for danger signals in the eyes of boys, for Poppy, according to
those lights of hers, was honest. If she knew the secret of the world,
she would not have told it to Ricky-ticky; he was much too young. Men,
in Poppy's code of morality, were different. But this amazing,
dreamy, interrogative look was not the sort of thing that Poppy was
accustomed to, and for once in her life Poppy felt shy.

"I say, Rickets, there goes a quarter to twelve. _Did_ I wake him out
of his little sleep?"

Poppy talked as much to the canary as to Rickets, which made it all