Beebee’s Fate is Sealed.
It was a day or two after, that Shireen once more met her friends, but this time it was on the sunny lawn in front of Uncle Ben’s bungalow.
They were all there except Chammy the chameleon. No one knew for the present where he was. He had eaten an extra supply of mealworms and flies the day before, and forthwith disappeared. In a fortnight’s time perhaps, he might be found in the fold of a curtain, or behind the ventilator in the Colonel’s study, or he might be brought up from the cellar in a scuttle of coals, or tumble out of a bag of flour when the cook went to make a dumpling, for no one could ever say for certain where Chammy might or might not be.
But on this particular afternoon Colonel Clarkson and Uncle Ben were drinking iced sherbet, and smoking their pipes in peace at a little wicker table under the shadow of the great chestnut tree.
Warlock and Tabby had just come back from a long ramble in the woods, and thrown themselves down beside Shireen and her foster son, Vee-Vee, the Pomeranian, Cockie, and Dick, the starling, were bandying words together on the gowany lawn. (The gowan is the mountain daisy.)
It would have been very difficult indeed for a stranger to have told whether they were quarrelling or not.
One thing is certain, they were each of them trotting out all the words in their somewhat limited vocabulary for the other’s benefit, no matter whether they were relevant or not.
Dick was much more active than Cockie, and ran round and round him on the lawn, pausing occasionally to thrust his beak into the ground, and opening it out like a pair of compasses, peep into the hole to see if a worm were at home.
I have said that Dick kept running round and round Cockie. He certainly described a circle about two yards from the cockatoo—he knew better than to come any nearer, for the big bird had a punishing beak—but seeing that Cockie in the centre went wheeling about, and always faced Dick, it becomes a question whether Dick actually did go round him. What do you think?
And all the while the two kept talking.