One evening she was in difficulties about the quarantine, which was enforced that year on the Italian frontier.  The local doctor had gone down that morning to see the Italian doctor and arrange some details.  “Then, perhaps, my dear,” she said to her husband, “he is the quarantine.”  “No, my love,” replied her husband.  “The quarantine is not a person, it is a place where they put people”; but she would not be comforted, and suspected the quarantine as an enemy that might at any moment pounce out upon her and her parrots.  So a lady told me once that she had been in like trouble about the anthem.  She read in her Prayer Book that in choirs and places where they sing “here followeth the anthem,” yet the person with this most mysteriously sounding name never did follow.  They had a choir, and no one could say the church was not a place where they sang, for they did sing—­both chants and hymns.  Why, then, this persistent slackness on the part of the anthem, who at this juncture should follow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk?  No doubt he would come some day, and then what would he be like?  Fair or dark?  Tall or short?  Would he be bald and wear spectacles like papa, would he be young and good-looking?  Anyhow, there was something wrong, for it was announced that he would follow, and he never did follow; therefore there was no knowing what he might not do next.

I heard of the parrots a year or two later as giving lessons in Italian to an English maid.  I do not know what their terms were.  Alas! since then both they and their mistress have joined the majority.  When the poor lady felt her end was near she desired (and the responsibility for this must rest with her, not me) that the birds might be destroyed, as fearing that they might come to be neglected, and knowing that they could never be loved again as she had loved them.  On being told that all was over, she said, “Thank you,” and immediately expired.

Reflecting in such random fashion, and strolling with no greater method, I worked my way back through Cheapside and found myself once more in front of Sweeting’s window.  Again the turtles attracted me.  They were alive, and so far at any rate they agreed with me.  Nay, they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was much in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must be mistaken in arming themselves so very heavily.  Any creature on getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be landed not in safety but annihilation.  It should have no communion with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it was to hook on to outside things.  What death can be more absolute than such absolute isolation?  Perfect death, indeed, if it were attainable (which it is not), is as near perfect security as we can reach, but it is not the kind of security aimed at by any animal that is at the pains of defending itself.