The sun shone very brightly next morning; the sky was blue; and a silence, broken only by the constant roar of the torrent, brooded over the bills.
We all went to see, or rather seek, for Professor Dick’s Academy.
But for a long time all in vain, and I was beginning to think the events of last evening must all have taken place in dreamland, when, emerging from the trees, the stalwart form of the old shepherd himself was observed coming towards us. In a few minutes more we were in the cottage.
And there, sure enough was Dick hard at work teaching his class. He was loose, his pupils all caged. We were warned to keep silence, and did so as long as we could.
Dick repeated words and sentences over and over again, and some of the pupils were most attentive and apt. And the way some of the more earnest stretched down their necks, cocked their heads and listened, was amusing in the extreme.
But there was one bad boy in the class—a saucy-looking cockatoo, with a red garland round his neck.
“I want a bit o’ sugar,” was all he would say, and he kept on at it. “A bit o’ sugar, a bit o’ sugar; I want a bit o’ sugar.”
The Professor went towards the delinquent’s cage, as if to reason with him; but the naughty bird laughed derisively, and finished off by making a grab at Dick through the bars.
The old man at once threw a black cover over the cage, upon which the bird’s tune was changed, and in the dark he seemed to bitterly bemoan his fate, repeating in a most lugubrious voice the words—“Poor Polly! Poor dear little Polly.”
One of us laughed.