the open door, fearlessly perching on the invalid's lap and shoulders
while she fed them high-priced rice and dainty bits of dearly-bought
chicken.

I dispersed the pigeons with a flap of my apron and with forced mildness
protested. "I'm obliged to ask you to be less generous. The price of
rice is higher than those pigeons can fly and, as for chicken, it's
about ten sen a feather. There's abundant food for you; but we cannot
afford to feed all the fowls of the air."

"Oh! dear Miss Jenkins, I couldn't drive them away. The cunning things!
Every coo they uttered sounded like a love word."

I hoped it was the patient's physical weakness, and not a part of her
nature.

I could not possibly survive a steady diet of emotion so tender that it
bubbled over at the flutter of a pigeon's wing.

I'd brought it on myself, however, and I was determined to share my home
and my life with Jane Gray. Sentimental and visionary as she was, with
the funny little twist in her tongue, the poor excuse of a body seemed
the last place power of any kind would choose for a habitation. I was
not disposed to attribute the supernatural to my companion, but from the
day of her arrival unusual events popped up to speak for themselves.

A nearby volcano, asleep for half a century, blew off its cap, covering
land and sea with ashes and fiery lava. All my pink roses bloomed weeks
earlier than they had any business to, and for the first time in years
my old gardener got drunk. Between dashes of cold water on his head he