MR. ARTHUR BENACRES—the celebrated philanthropist—suffered in private life the inconvenience of being an ostrich. This was due to the act of a rather deaf fairy friend of the family, who mistook an observation on the weather (addressed to him by a conversational curate at the christening) for a request for feathers.
This, as you suppose, caused Mr. Benacres some difficulty, and led him to consider methods of escape. For though it was agreeable to be able to subsist on odd scraps of broken rubbish, and to dig with his head (instead of a spade) in the nice clean sand, people did make a fuss on the Underground and at parties.
Till at last another fairy friend of the family, who was neither deaf or blind, said: “Why don’t you go into Parliament? Then nobody will notice.” And they didn’t.