“Why, what a boy you are!” he cried, wonderingly.
“Oh, it’s easy enough to find that out, uncle,” I said, colouring. “Now let’s see what’s inside.”
“Think there’s anything inside, Natty, my boy?”
“Oh yes, uncle,” I said; “it’s full of something. Why, it’s tow.”
“Toe, my boy!” he said seriously, “parrot’s toe?”
“T-o-w. Tow, uncle, what they use to clean the lamps. I can stuff a bird, uncle, I know.”
“Think you can, Natty?”
“Yes, to be sure,” I said confidently. “Why, look here, it’s easy to make a ball of tow the same shape as an egg for the body, and then to push wires through the body, and wings, and legs; no, stop a moment, they seem to be fastened in. Yes, so they are, but I know I can do it.”
Uncle Joe held his pipe in his mouth with his teeth and rubbed his hands with satisfaction, for he was as pleased with my imagined success as I was, and as he looked on I pulled out the stuffing from the skin, placing the wings here, the legs there, and the tail before me, while the head with its white-irised glass eye was stuck upon a nail in the wall just over the bench.
“I feel as sure as can be, uncle, that I could stuff one.”