"Mary!" cried Leicester; "a parrot called Mary! but I should not dare be so familiar with the bird as to call her Mary. I shall say Miss Mary, and shall always address her with my best dancing-school bow."
The parrot arrived duly, and proved to be such a superior bird, and so interesting and attractive, that the children all fell in love with her. The name of Polly was entirely unsuited to such a dignified creature, and Mary seemed far more appropriate.
The bird's plumage was of brilliant coloring, and Lilian declared that the Van Arsdale ladies copied their own clothes from Miss Mary's. The parrot was an exceedingly fine talker, and readily picked up new phrases.
Whenever the Van Arsdale ladies entered the room, Mary would remark, "Hurrah for Miss Marcia!" or, "Hurrah for Miss Amanda!" as the case might be. This hurrahing was quite in line with the Dorrances' own mode of expression, and they soon taught Mary to hurrah for each of them by name.
Although on the whole, the Misses Van Arsdale were satisfactory boarders, they were far more difficult than the easy-going Faulkners. Miss Marcia had a most irritating way of popping out of her room, and calling over the banister, "Clerk, clerk!"
Since the moment of registration, she had looked upon Leicester as the official clerk of the hotel, and applied to him a dozen times a day for things that she wanted or thought she wanted.
Usually these applications were made by screaming from the head of the staircase. Sometimes the request was for stationery,—again for hot water, warm water, cold water, or ice water. Miss Amanda, too, made similar demands, and was given to calling for a glass of milk at five o'clock in the morning, or a few sandwiches after everybody had retired for the night.
But Dorothy was learning that the way to success is not always a primrose path, and she cheerfully did her best to accede to such of these demands as she considered just and reasonable. And she tried, too, to look at the justice and reasonableness from the standpoint of her guests' rather than her own opinions.
The children had agreed that whenever Miss Marcia desired Mary's cage moved, any one of the four was to do it. And it was fortunate that the task was thus divided, for Miss Marcia was fussy, and twenty times a day, or more, one of the Dorrances might be seen carrying the large cage from the hall to the veranda, from the veranda to the parlor, from the parlor to the upper balcony, and so on.
But as careful attention to Mary's welfare was one of the principal conditions of the Van Arsdales' continued stay at the Dorrance Domain, and too, as the children were one and all devoted to the bird, this work was not objected to.