“What for?” I asked, yawning. The companion certainly did bore me.
“Because Mrs. Vandaleur says it’s sick. She bought it the other day; the people who owned it wanted quite a lot for it.”
The companion was opening the door of the fowl-house as she spoke. Mrs. Vandaleur, hearing the creak of the lock, turned around, and if I did not mistake, her look was very black. It cleared at once, and a sunny smile overspread her face.
“So you are looking at my new pet,” she said. “Poor thing, I think it is sick; but it is very amusing when it is well.”
“Oh, this is my partner of the dance!” said the Marquis, as the great bird came solemnly out, turning its big brown eyes suspiciously about and about. He held out his hand to it, bowed, and began to dance towards it, flapping his coat-tails in imitation of wings, and singing, to an absurd tune, the well-known nonsense rhyme:
“I wish I was a cassowary
On the plains of Timbuctoo,
For then I’d eat a missionary,
Arms, legs and hymn book too.”
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