"Well, well," he confessed as he ruminated over this new knowledge. "Now my alarm is all gone. If he dares to beat me I shall make a frank statement to every one."
"He will do nothing," replied the girl, "and it is better that you should not speak. Speaking is quite unnecessary."
He nodded his head as if in approval of such sentiments. He was not an apostle of communicativeness except as a last resort. Sitting on the wall in a debonnair way, he took seeds from a little tin box he had hidden in his tunic, and releasing his bird cast them up in the air one by one. The mynah, with the regularity and sureness of long training, caught each one unfailingly—finally coming to rest on the boy's hand. An admiring comment greeted these efforts.
"Oh, this is nothing," he remarked. "Some are trained to such perfection that they not only fly but talk."
"Talk," she echoed incredulously.
"Yes, it is even so," he rejoined, anxious to show his superior knowledge. "There are some persons who have such power that they can understand the talk of even untrained birds."
"That is impossible," the girl objected.
"I can tell you a story that proves it," he declared, and swinging his legs he began a well-known story which he had heard from the story-tellers at the tea-houses again and again.
"There was once an old Taoist priest who used to live by begging in a village. Everybody gave him according to their means, so the priest felt under a great obligation to them all. One day he suddenly warned them that they had better be careful about fire, and the story so alarmed them all that a number of them went and inquired what he meant.
"'Well,' he said, 'I happened to overhear an oriole who was preening himself on a tree remark repeatedly: "Look out, a big fire: rescue will be difficult. It will be very alarming."'