Agamemnon Menelaus looked at him nervously. "Are you sure they are young birds?" he suggested timidly. "They might,--they might be hens, you know." There was a half-perceptible quiver of his handsome head as if to watch the girl. The bird-catcher broke out into violent asseverations, and Aggie's hand, out of sheer trepidation, went into his pocket again.
"Hens!"
This time there was a ring almost of command in the tone, and Agamemnon obeyed it instinctively by rising to go. "Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri," came the gurgle of the pigeon; or was it partly a chuckle from the girl as she sidled still further along the step?
"So! that is good riddance," said the bird-catcher to the parrot-seller, angrily. "God made the rainbow, but the devil made the dye-pot! Yet I thought I had sold them at last. He looked not so sharp as that."
The parrot-seller yawned. "'Twas Kabootri did it," he remarked with bland indifference. "She said 'hens.'"
The bird-catcher stared at him incredulously, then passed the look on to the girl who still sat with the crooning pigeon held close to her face.
"Kabootri?" he echoed with an uneasy laugh. "Nay, neighbour, 'twas she who told me but an hour ago that if I sold not something this Friday she would kill herself. 'Tis a trick of words she hath learned of her trade," he went on with a curious mixture of anger and approbation. "But it means something to a man who hath cursed luck and a daughter who has a rare knack of getting her own way."
The parrot-seller gave a pull at a bulbul-seller's pipe as if it were his own. "Thou wilt be disgraced if thou give it her much longer, friend," he said calmly. "'Tis time she were limed and netted. And with no mother either to whack her!"
The uneasy laugh came again. "If the Nawab's pigeon wins we may see to a son-in-law; but she is a child still, neighbour, and a good daughter too, helping her father more than he helps her." There was a touch of real pride in his tone.
"She said 'hens,'" retorted the parrot-seller. "Ask her if she did not."