The very first opportunity, my uncle took me up with him to the lumber-room, an attic of which my aunt kept the key; and here, after quite a hunt amongst old portmanteaux, broken chairs, dusty tables, bird-cages, wrecked kennels, cornice-poles, black-looking pictures, and dozens of other odds and ends, we came in a dark corner upon the remains of one of my aunt’s earliest pets. It was the stuffed figure of a grey parrot that had once stood beneath a glass shade, but the shade was broken, and poor Polly, who looked as if she had been moulting ever since she had been fixed upon her present perch, had her head partly torn from her shoulders.
“Here she is,” said my uncle. “Poor old Polly! What a bird she was to screech! She never liked me, Nat, but used to call me wretch, as plain as you could say it yourself. It was very wicked of me, I dare say, Nat, but I was so glad when she died, and your aunt was so sorry that she cried off and on for a week.”
“But she never was a pretty bird, uncle,” I said, holding the stuffed creature to the light.
“No, my boy, never, and she used to pull off her feathers when she was in a passion, and call people wretch. She bit your aunt’s nose once. But do you think it will do?”
“Oh yes, uncle,” I said; “but may I pull it to pieces?”
“Well, yes, my boy, I think so,” he said dreamily. “You couldn’t spoil it, could you?”
“Why, it is spoiled already, Uncle Joe,” I said.
“Yes, my boy, so it is; quite spoiled. I think I’ll risk it, Nat.”
“But if aunt would be very cross, uncle, hadn’t I better leave it?” I said.
“If you didn’t take it, Nat, she would never see it again, and it would lie here and moulder away. I think you had better take it, my boy.”