I was that delighted that I scraped Minkie’s leg to tell her I was underneath the table. A mongoose coming to join the family! What is a mongoose, anyhow? Has it four legs, or two? Can it fight? I must have murmured my thoughts aloud, because the parrot gave a screech that made Schwartz jump.
“Go and hide in the nearest rabbit burrow, little dog,” he yelled. “Run away and bury yourself with a bone. When that mongoose turns up he’ll chase you into the next parish. Oh, Christopher! Aren’t we havin’ a beano? Another rum ’ot, please, miss.”
I kept my temper. There is no use arguing with a parrot. You can’t get at him, and he has an amazing variety of language at command; but I must state one small point in his favor; if you pay no heed to his vulgarity, and cut out of his talk the silly bits which seem to please people who wear clothes, he gives one a lot of useful information. He will not say a word in a friendly way, same as I give even Tibbie the nod if there’s a mouse in the kitchen. The best plan is to sauce him, or sneer at him. Then he flies into a rage and talks like a book.
So, “Polly,” said I, “you shouldn’t strain your voice in that fashion. It will make your feet ache.”
He knew what I meant well enough, because just then he was hanging head downwards from his perch. He reached out and took a grip of a steel bar in his beak, pretending he had hold of me by the neck.
“If I were you I’d whitewash my face in the hope that the mongoose would not recognize me after the first round,” he croaked.
“I believe you are afraid of the thing yourself.”
“Say not so, whiskers. Kiss me, mother, kiss your darling. A full-grown mongoose will make you the sickest dog in the British Isles. Whoop at him, Boxer! Back to him, Bendigo! O my sainted aunt, I’ll watch that snake-catcher chuck you into the lake. Nah, then, who’ll tike odds. I’ll back the fee-ald. The fee-ald a powney!”
“Evangeline,” said Mam, “put the green cloth over that bird. He grows worse daily, and I cannot make out where he learns so much cockney slang.”
Minkie kicked me under the table. She guessed I had been teasing him. At any rate, the parrot clearly expected to witness a first-rate set-to when the mongoose arrived. In his own mind he had already taken a ticket for the front row of the stalls, and I meant to oblige him with a star turn. A mongoose may be able to catch a snake, but he must not put on airs with a dog who killed thirty rats in one minute the last time Farmer Hodson threshed his barley stack.