We shall get far higher prices than we do now. I seem to be putting
most of the work on your shoulders, but do not want you to help me
in the shop. I will look after the birds and buy and sell as I used
to do; you will have the back room private to yourself for stuffing
and mounting."

Frank was delighted at this allotment of labor, and was soon at
work rummaging the drawers and picking out specimens for mounting,
and made a selection sufficient to keep him employed for weeks. That
evening he sallied out and expended his two pounds in underlinen,
of which he was sorely in need. As he required them his employer
ordered showcases for the window, of various sizes, getting the
backgrounds painted and fitted up as Frank suggested.

Frank did not get on so fast with his work as he had hoped,
for the fame of the sailor's cat and macaw spread rapidly in the
neighborhood, and there was a perfect rush of sailors and their
wives anxious to have birds and skins, which had been brought from
abroad, mounted. The sailor himself looked in one day.

"If you like another two pounds for that 'ere cat, governor, I'm
game to pay you. It's the best thing that ever happened to me.
Every one's wanting to see 'em, and there's the old woman dressed
up in her Sunday clothes a-sitting in the parlor as proud as a
peacock a showing of 'em off. The house ain't been so quiet since
I married. Them animals would be cheap to me at a ten pound note.
They'll get you no end of orders, I can tell you."

The orders, indeed, came in much faster than Frank could fulfill
them, although he worked twelve hours a day; laying aside all other