As she opened the side door, she caught a flash of something small and yellow moving through the air in the middle of the kitchen. “Quick Emily, shut the door!” Alice cried. “Your canary is out.” Emily ducked into the kitchen and shut the door behind her. She looked around quickly and saw the canary flap against the window above the sink. Then, as Alice lunged toward him with her hands open, he flew up out of reach and back across the kitchen into the breakfast room. “Stop chasing him,” Emily commanded. “He’ll never settle if he’s scared.” Emily followed the bird into the breakfast room, trying to move calmly, so that she wouldn’t frighten him further. Inside her chest, her heart was jumping. What if she had let the canary out when she opened the door to come in? What if he’d flown away and been lost? “I’ll close the door to the hall and get his cage,” Emily told Alice. “If we can keep him in this room, and he calms down, he might just fly back into the cage.”
