"I'll get my hat," Lassie said, and ran up-stairs. Alva's door was closed. "I'm lying down, please let me sleep. It's nothing but my head," she called from behind it. Lassie slipped on her wraps quickly and ran down; and they went out towards the Falls.
Mrs. Ray saw them go from the post-office window. The excitement having somewhat subsided, she was now left alone with Joey Beall's fiancée, who was there to try on her wedding dress.
"Such is life," Mrs. Ray commented; "that woman's pulled her shades down for a nice nap, and off they skip for a good-by down by the Falls. Oh, my, but those Falls are a blessing to the young! It's too far between roots and rocks for children to get down there, and as soon as anybody's married they never want to have nothing to do with love-making any more; so steep romantic places is just made for the only kind of people that have any reason for wanting to get to them."
"The Falls is full of meaning for lovers," said Joey Beall's fiancée, sentimentally. "Joey and I never get tired of them."
"You wait till you're married," said Mrs. Ray; "you'll find no meaning in climbing up and down those banks and having Joey jerk your arms out of the sockets, then. Yes, indeed. They call it tempestuous affection beforehand, but it comes to a plain jerk in the end. Life is full of learning."
"Gran'ma Benton's learning the parrot a great deal," said Sarah Catt. "I come by there just now and she's beginning already to teach it a new sentence. She says: 'Where are the Lathbuns, now?' and the parrot's got to learn to say 'Skipped,'—she's just set her heart on it."
"I d'n know but what I'm going to end by being sorry for that parrot," remarked Mrs. Ray, thoughtfully. "I think Gran'ma Benton's overdoing it a little, if she means it to keep up with the Lathbuns. You can force even a parrot beyond its strength. She's made it nervous, already. She's got to hold its claw all through every thunderstorm all summer long, and if a fly gets in its milk, it won't touch either the fly or the milk, which I call spoiling the parrot—not to speak of the fly and the milk, for of course no one else in a house is going to eat a fly or drink milk that a parrot won't look at."
"Sarah told me they had to take away all the looking-glasses every spring, or it cried the whole time it was moulting—over its tail feathers, you know," said the caller, thoughtfully.
"Well, if they come to live here, I shan't spoil it, I know that," said Mrs. Ray. "I shall be pleasant to it and I shall be kind, and it can run after me all it likes and I'll be careful never to step on it for the very simple reason that I don't want to take the time to clean up any sort of smashed creature, but it won't have no night-light here, nor get its claw held when it thunders, nor have the looking-glasses took down to spare its feelings. No one ever took a looking-glass down to spare my feelings, and I can't begin to take them down to spare a parrot's. Well, Sarah, I guess you can try on now. Wait till I fill up on pins. Oh, my lands alive, I wish I knew where those foxy Lathbuns are this minute."
"I guess Mr. Adams'll be glad to know they're caught," said Sarah Catt; "he's so nervous for fear they'll stop with him to-night. Joey saw him just after dinner. He was more scared even than Gran'ma Benton's parrot in a thunderstorm."