Milly Dunstan knew where 'Joe' was buried, and the only difficulty, in the opinion of Mathers, was digging him up. For some reason, though he did not shrink from the horrors of getting 'Joe' ready for the stuffing treatment, he hated the digging up; so I undertook to do this. There was little danger, as 'Joe' had been buried in a secluded rockery under a large fern, where nobody ever went. Milly showed me the spot on a half-holiday, when I was supposed to be stopping in, owing to bronchitis or something of that sort; and I popped out, got a trowel from the gardener's potting-shed, and dug up 'Joe.' He had been very nicely buried in a large, empty tobacco tin of Browne's; and I also made the grave look all right again and put back the wooden gravestone. Minnie had stuck this up, and on it Freckles had carved for her the rather sad words—
"To the memory of darling 'Joe,' died 7th February, 1901. Age unknown. Regretted by all."
Owing to the weather being frosty, and the ground simply full of splinters of ice, 'Joe' had fortunately kept perfectly. This comforted Mathers a good deal, and when I told him the poor old chap was not even gamey, he was much pleased. He worked in fearful secrecy at night, and kept 'Joe' in his play-box by day. Most of the actual work was done at the passage window by moonlight; and when the moon was no good, which happened in two days, we used a candle-end. Once the pepper got up our noses, and we both sneezed in a way to wake half the dormitory; but nobody suspected, and the work was gradually done.
MOST OF THE ACTUAL WORK WAS DONE BY MOONLIGHT
I merely held things and advised. The actual stuffing was entirely the work of Bunny. When 'Joe' was once ready for the cotton-wool, the stuffing was as simple as possible; and owing to his toughness we easily sewed up his chest afterwards; but the thing was to get him to look as if he was alive. This is evidently the great difficulty in the stuffer's art, and Mathers had not mastered it by any means from the Encyclopædia Britannica. I said—
"For a first attempt it is spiffing; but all the same, 'Joe' never looked like that in life or death. He is now, as it were, neither dead or alive."
Mathers admitted this. He said he thought it was the want of the eyes, and that all would come right when they were in.
I asked him where he was going to get the eyes, and he said he was going to write to the great Rowland Ward for them. This he did do, and they sent a pair of most lifelike parrot's eyes, and only charged three bob. The eyes did a great deal for 'Joe,' and certainly made him look alive. But it was a strange sort of unearthly life, I thought. They made him look creepy, as if he was a ghost risen from the tomb to haunt somebody who had killed him. Also about this time we had to get some Condy's fluid to steady poor old 'Joe' down a bit. I thought this was serious, but Mathers said not. He assured me that Condy's fluid is an everyday thing in stuffing parrots and suchlike; and then I had an idea, and got my 'anti-something' tooth-powder; which also helped, and so it came to be some use after all, which tooth-powder seldom is. We varnished the claws, and tried to stick back a lot of feathers that unfortunately came out in the process of stuffing. Then I got a bit of wood and a stick for a perch, and we wired 'Joe' on and put a walnut at his feet; which was a good thought of Bunny's, because walnuts were always his favourite food.
Then, from being very confident and hopeful and full Of the Doctor's joy and gladness when he should see the parrot, Mathers sank suddenly into a sort of state of despair. He couldn't get the wings right, and he said the thought of them tortured him day and night and sent him down three places in his class. At each attempt more feathers fell out, and finally I got impatient with Mathers and told him that if he messed about with the parrot any more the thing would fall to pieces and fail utterly. I also reminded him that the matron, when passing by the play-boxes the day before, had thought there must be a dead mouse behind the wainscot. Things were, in fact, coming to a climax, and I said that as he'd had the pluck to stuff 'Joe,' I hoped, after all the fearful danger and swot we'd had, that he would keep on to the end and give him to the Doctor and trust to luck that it would come off all right.