This proved to be no less than Claggett Chew's cabin, the door of which had been left open so that Osterbridge Hawsey could watch the fight with the least possible discomfort. He sat, somnolent, in a comfortable chair, his long legs stretched out before him, smoking a clay pipe. His attention wandering, as it so often did, he failed to see the mouse who ran under his legs into the shadow beneath them. The frantic mouse now determined, in the seconds left to it for decision, to attempt a bold move. In a flash—in fact, as a black cat with angry yellow-slitted eyes put its head around the door jamb—a jade-green parakeet with red and yellow breast feathers hopped onto Osterbridge Hawsey's ankle, and with a speed tempered by its most engaging ways, sidled up Osterbridge Hawsey's outstretched leg.
The yellow-eyed cat made a dash with both clawing paws outstretched to fall upon the bird, but the parakeet fluttered into the air out of reach and came down higher up on Osterbridge Hawsey's knee. Osterbridge, startled from his daydream, shooed away the cat and got up precipitously enough to give it a kick which sent it miaowling from the cabin. Osterbridge, vastly pleased to see his green parakeet again, was wreathed in smiles.
"Ah, now!" he exclaimed, holding out a condescending finger, "Petit Monsieur back again! How too simply enchanting! Just when poor Osterbridge was so bored and had no one to talk to! Well, my pretty—" and both Osterbridge and the parakeet cocked their heads at one another—"and where have you been, I wonder?"
Osterbridge examined the little bird perched on his finger and his eyes were thoughtful. "It is true, you have a tiny mark at the side of your jaw—if parakeets have jaws, my friend. But there is no such thing as magic. Not the kind of magic whereby a human can be something else!"
He broke into peals of high laughter. "What a joke if it were possible! Now what could I be, eh?"
He looked fondly at the bird and the bird looked back at him, daring to open its beak and emit a small but clear "Haw!"
"Haw yourself!" returned Osterbridge in high good humor. He leaned back in his chair.
"Now, all this is a most engaging train of thought," he pursued. "If I could change myself, what should I be?"
He fell to musing, and as he did so the dreaded shadow Chris had anticipated fell across the doorway. A moment later Claggett Chew, limping from an old wound and a newly received bruise, stood in the entrance.