With this dire threat, he departed along the path, Loretta still hanging head down at his knee.
Scarcely a moment later a commotion sounded from the distance, a commotion muffled by ’dobe wall. First came the voice of old Gabrielda, then the clatter of an over-turning pan, next the terror-stricken shrieks of Loretta. Presently, Padre Anzar appeared, his jaw set, his eyes shining with the look of duty done.
“She will be nicely scared this time,” he told Padre Alonzo. “She will match her busy peak with Tomasso’s claws, and she will remember hereafter to let my blossoms alone.”
“Perhaps,” began Padre Alonzo, deprecatingly, “perhaps ’twere as well to take her out of temptation’s way, to—”
Padre Anzar raised his shoulders, strode over to knife and trowel and caught them up. “Move her as thou wilt,” he said grumpily, “and the farther the better. Tony is proper for us, pretty and songful. But that parrot,”—he shook his tools as if they were Loretta—“how altogether useless and ugly and noisy and blasphemous and good-for-naught!”
With this he departed into the shrubbery.
Sounds were still coming from the kitchen—Gabrielda’s cracked voice, Loretta’s cries, the sullen yowling of a cat. Nodding sadly, Padre Alonzo waddled to the perch, vacant and formed like a cross. This he lifted and bore to a place along the wall opposite the great crucifix, where climbed no flowers. Then, smiling gently, as if with some tender thought, he waddled back to the trellis, took the cage from its nail, and, returning to the perch, hung Tony close beside.