"If you put a few bananas on the top of the cabin there, they wouldn't want any coaxing; they'd come and take them."
"Yes, when we were not looking; but I mean, coax them into being tame enough to feed from one's hand."
"Might perhaps, but they're treacherous. They like to spring on any one's shoulders to bite the back of the neck. Look, look! Parrots!"
A little flock of brightly coloured, long-tailed lories flew over the river, but before a gun could be seized they had disappeared.
"Not very good ones," said Harry. "Only green."
"And sour," said the doctor.
"Sour?" cried Harry wonderingly.
"Yes, sour grapes, Hal. Why, they were lovely specimens, my boy. Look at those butterflies flitting about the flowers growing there in wreaths. Now, if this were a hard road we might get a few of them."
"We could get one of those sun-birds," said Harry, pointing to some half-dozen fluttering about the cluster of flowers dependent from a bough overhanging the stream.
"Yes, but we must wait till we have got some dry sand to use instead of shot. Mind we scrape some up from the first shallow place we reach."