"Polly sing! Oh, ho! ho! Polly can't sing no more'n a crow," squeaked out Dan.
"Can too, can too!"
"Pretty Polly! Polly want a cracker. Polly sing for her dear Dan. Oh, boo hoo!"
Polly screamed in a tearing rage.
The young colored lad entered. "Miss Lu, de birds disturb yer gramper. Lemme take Polly. You bad bird, you're goin' in a dungeon."
With that he whisked Polly off. Dan laughed gleefully. The boys came, and Dan went through his stock accomplishments, much to their delight.
"But Polly's a sight the funniest," declared Lu. "Only she has such a horrid temper and it just grows worse. We had a monkey and that got to be so awful bad. Now let's go and see the guinea-pigs."
They were up on the top floor. "We had them down cellar," explained one of the boys, "but some of them died. 'Gene said 'twas too dark and damp."
The children trudged up-stairs. There was a pen in a small room which seemed a receptacle for all sorts of broken toys. Ah, how pretty the little things were; black-and-yellow-spotted, bright-eyed, and soft-coated, with a tiny sort of squeak, and tame enough to be caught. Lu offered one to Hanny, but she drew back in half fear. Then they brought in the squirrel, and he was a handsome fellow with beady eyes and a bushy tail, and when they let him out he ran up on any one's shoulder.
"If it was only warm, we'd go out and have a swing. Oh, don't you want a ride? Here's our horse. We don't care much for it now, though in summer we have it out-of-doors."