He was a lovely-looking bird as far as the tints of the plumage went; but his short hooked beak, with a tuft of feathers each side, and forward curved crest, gave him a droll aspect which delighted Jem, as the bird came and sat upon a twig, shrieking and chattering at them in a state of the greatest excitement.
“Look at his starshers, Mas’ Don,” said Jem, as the bird’s side tufts half covered the beak and then left it bare. “Look at his hair, too. Hasn’t he brushed it up in a point? There, he heared what I said, and has laid it down again. Look at him! Look at him! Did you ever see such a rum one in your life?”
For at that minute, after turning its head on one side for a good look, and then on the other, so as to inspect, them again, the bird seemed to have an idea that it might gain a little more knowledge from a fresh point of view, and to effect this turned itself completely upside down, hanging by its soft yoke toes, and playing what Jem called a game of peep-to!
This lasted for some minutes, and then the bird squatted upon the bough in a normal position, set up its feathers all over, and began to chatter.
“Hark at him, Mas’ Don. He’s calling names. There, hit me if he didn’t. Did you hear him?”
“I heard him chatter.”
“Yes; but I mean calling us that ‘My pakeha—my pakeha!’ that he did.”
“Nonsense!”
“Ah, you may say nonsense, but parrots and cockatoos is werry strange birds. Wonderful what they knows and what they says.”
“I don’t believe they know what they say, Jem.”