We had a debate on it. Our public debates are listened to by the Doctor and the masters, and the subjects are chosen by them; but sometimes we have private debates that are not listened to, and we had one on 'Joe'; and the Government, led by Macmullen, our champion debater, held that 'Joe' had died a natural death, and the Opposition, led by Richmond, thought he had died by treachery. On a division the Government was defeated by two votes, owing to the magnificent speech of Richmond, and Steggles said there ought to be an inquest and a post-mortem; and so did Peters, who was positive the death was a murder. The mystery was who could have done it, because 'Joe' had not an enemy in the world, unless it was Mrs. Dunstan's cat, which he mimicked to its face and then barked suddenly and made the cat think there was a dog after her.
But this cat could not have done it. The parrot was found dead in its cage on the morning of a day in February. It was quite stiff and dignified. No cat had touched him. Mathers said it cut him to the heart to think of poor 'Joe' falling off his perch in the dead of night, and lying helpless there, and perhaps calling for help. He said if there had been loving hands to give it a drop of brandy and put its claws in mustard and water, it might be among us yet. And he went on in such a harrowing way, and thought such sad ideas, that at last I had to smack his head and make him shut up.
There was no inquest and no post-mortem, for the Doctor refused to have 'Joe' examined, much to our astonishment. In fact we thought it was rather unsportsmanlike of the Doctor to hustle 'Joe' into his grave so jolly quickly. The corpse disappeared, and the Doctor was slightly changed for several days. He had got very fond of the bird, and I think he missed hearing it say, "Dear Milly Dunstan, dear Milly Dunstan," which it did hundreds of times in the day when it was feeling well and happy.
Then, a week after 'Joe' was buried, came the marvellous determination of Mathers. For the first time in his life I felt a sort of pride in Mathers, and was glad to be his chum. At the same time the danger was frightful, and I had no idea what the end might be. Only two people knew it, Milly and myself. I rather advised him against it; but she was hot and strong for it: so Mathers went ahead into a regular sea of danger. Not that he did it for Milly—far from it: he did it for himself, and to advance his prosperity with the Doctor. His prosperity with the Doctor was extremely low, and he had made one mistake already by offering the Doctor half-a-box of dates in a rather patronizing way; and so now it was neck or nothing, and Mathers well knew the frightful risks he ran in the thing he was going to do.
He said, "I always make a success or an utter failure—at games, in class and everything. Either this will make me the Doctor's friend for life, or make him my bitter enemy for life."
The idea in the strange mind of Bunny Mathers was to bring 'Joe' back again to Merivale. He could not raise him from the dead, but he meant to do the next best thing, and dig him up and secretly stuff him.
Only Mathers could have imagined this, though there were one or two other chaps equal to doing the thing if somebody else had thought of it.
I said to Mathers, "What do you know about stuffing parrots?"
And he said, "More than you might think."
He had read the article on stuffing beasts in the Encyclopædia Britannica, which Briggs allowed him to refer to, little knowing the reason; and he said that stuffing was simpler than embalming, and that his brother, Mathers minor, had often stuffed bats and moles and other things in the holidays at home. He told me that all you want for bird-stuffing is wire, cotton-wool and pepper; and for sixpence he could get all these things in great abundance.