He walked slowly, here stooping to right a stalk or jerk a weed, there stretching to pick a fading orange leaf from where it marred the glaucous sheen of its fellows. Fronting the figure, he paused long enough to whisper a prayer and make the holy sign. Then he rambled on, busy with trowel and blade.
But presently he came to a full and startled halt. He was beside the trellis up which climbed his treasured fuchsia. The cross-like perch of the parrot was beyond the bordering cacti, and unoccupied. Near by, upon its nail, hung the canary cage, with Tony going upstairs and down untiringly, eyeing his visitor with no uneasiness, greeting him, on the contrary, with saucy chirps. While underneath, spotting the ground in some profusion, and cast as it were at the feet of the garden’s singer, were scores of scarlet blossoms!
The padre’s look travelled from the scattered flowers to the vacant perch, from the perch to the naked branches swaying against the trellis, from the branches to the wide, warm top of the ’dobe wall. And there was Loretta, patrolling in unconcealed apprehension.
The instant he caught sight of her he knew her guilt. He pursed his thin lips. Then, letting fall trowel and knife, he straddled the hedge.
“I’ll wring thy neck for thee!” he vowed.
A sandal in the trellis, a light spring, and his head came even with her. She backed away, raising her wings a little, and gawking in protest. He took a fresh grip on the wall, reached out and caught her like a chicken—by both legs.
Wild screeches rang through the garden, screeches that put the sparrows to flight and set the canary cheeping in fear. These were punctuated next by raucous appeals for “Tony” or gurgley parrot language.
The padre was down now, and standing on the path again. But he was not fulfilling his threat. Instead, he was viewing his captive angrily, yet in considerable indecision.
Loretta, on the other hand, was at no loss for a course of action. Between cries for the canary, demands for a handshake, and reiterated “Good-days,” she was vigorously trying her beak upon the padre’s fist.
But now a new factor upon the scene. Round the mission wall, waddling fast and propelling himself by his swinging arms, appeared Padre Alonzo. “Is’t the cats?” he asked as he came on; “oh, la! la! is’t the cats?”