“Which i must now dror to a klose, dobbin, and which i does hope you’ll allers have a good home and good shoes, dobbin, till you’re marched to the knacker’s. Gee up and away ye goes!—
“Good-bye, dobbin, polly’s gone to sleep, and master is a-playin’ the fiddle so soft and low like, in the meadow beyant yonder, which it allers does make me think o’ what the parson’s old pony once told me, dobbin, o’ a land where old hosses were taken to arter they were shot and their shoes taken off, a land o’ green meadows, dobbin, and a sweet quiet river a-rollin’ by, and long rows o’ wavin’ pollards like, with nothing to do all day, no ’arness to wear, no bit to hurt or rein to gall. Think o’ that, dobbin. Good-bye, dobbin—there goes the moosic again, so sweet and tremblin’ and sobbin’-like. i’m goin’ to listen and dream.
“Yours kindly,—
“Poor old Corn-flower.”
III.
From Polly the Cockatoo to Dick the Starling.
“Dear Dick,—If you weren’t the cleverest starling that ever talked or flew, with a coat all shiny with crimson and blue, I wouldn’t waste a tail feather in writing to you.
“You must know, Dick, that there are two Pollys on this wandering expedition, Polly the mare, Polly Pea-blossom, and Polly the pretty cockatoo, that’s me, though however master could have thought of making me godmother to an old mare, goodness only knows. Ha! ha! ha! it makes me laugh to think of it.
“They do say that I’m the happiest, and the prettiest, and the merriest bird, that ever yet was born, and I won’t be five till next birthday, though what I shall be before I am a hundred is more than I can think.
“Yes, I’ll live to a hundred, cockatoos all do; then my body will drop off the perch, and my soul will go into something else—ha! ha! ha! Wouldn’t you laugh too, if you had to live for a hundred years?