“My mother knows about it,” said Lucy, with a vexed toss of her curls, “see, here is the money to pay you for cutting my hair.”
“Perhaps so—perhaps so!” said the assistant, “but I should rather not put scissors to that hair, till Mr. Wynne tells me to. I expect him in soon—you can wait, miss, if you choose.”
Lucy did choose; so untying her bonnet-strings, she seated herself before a cage, in which hung a red and green poll parrot, who cocked his head one side, and looking at her with a doleful twist in his red eye, said,
“Poll’s sick!”
Lucy had never seen a poll parrot before, and she looked this way and that way, as if she could not believe that the bird said this.
Then the poll parrot said,
“Give Poll some sugar! Poll’s sick!” and before Lucy had done laughing at this, he said,
“Want to be shaved? take a seat.”
“No,” said Lucy, laughing; “but I want my hair cut!”
The poll parrot cocked his head on one side again, and whined out,