CHAPTER IV
THE BLACK MAN’S WAY
Told by Polly, the Parrot
YOU will observe that I was left in the dining-room with the Guv’nor. Those insignificant quadrupeds, Dan and Tib, thought that I was out of the fun. They always do think that, until they come smirking to me for news; then they go off and backbite me behind my tail feathers. That impudent whelp, Dan, sidled up this morning to ask me what a mongoose was. When I was weak enough, at the mention of grapes, to tell him it was an ichneumon, he had the cheek to call me some outlandish name that no decent bird would dream of using. I’ll make it hot for him, see if I don’t. And that yellow-eyed Tibbie, for all her dainty ways and quiet talk, is not much better. Sometimes, when I have a bath, I flick a few drops of water over her, and she looks at me as much as to say: “Oh, if only I could lay a paw on you!” Yet, mark my word, she’ll be trotting in here for a chat as soon as I say a word about the discussion between Schwartz and the Old Man.
I have been keeping an eye on the Guv’nor recently. Between you and me, it was he who taught me all the funny bits I know. There is nothing he enjoys more than to hear Mam exclaim: “Dear me! How in the world does the bird learn those vulgar songs?” It’s as easy as sitting on a rail. Some Italian ragamuffins come to Dale End occasionally with a Handel piano—eh, what? not that sort of handle; well, you know the thing I mean—and I pick up the tunes. When the Guv’nor hears me whistling them he sings the words, and at the next chance I get I amaze Mam with “My Irish Molly O” or “Why do they call me the Gibson Girl?” The Guv’nor finds out all about these things in London. Once Minkie asked him how he did it, and he told her he learnt them from the office-boy. I wish I knew that boy.
Now, it’s a solemn fact that I have not added a line to my collection during the past month. I know several new airs, and I have whistled them regularly, but the Old Man remains silent. At first I imagined that perhaps the office-boy had a swollen face, but soon I felt sure my teacher had lost his spirits. Minkie noticed it, but I found it out long before her. You see, we parrots are very wise birds, quick to observe, and able to examine any new notion from all points of view; my habit of looking at Dan upside down riles him far more than the silly things I shout at him.
Minkie, I gathered, guessed that her father was in trouble over some Stock Exchange business, and the mention of Kwantu by Captain Stanhope brought back to her mind the name of the mining company whose affairs, as discussed in a newspaper, seemed to be the cause of the worry. But it was I, the “giddy acrobat,” as Dan calls me, who hit on the real mystery, and I made even stolid Bob wild before I told him all about it next day.
While Schwartz was interviewing Minkie in the morning-room, the Guv’nor sat and stared at the fire. He was smoking, but he didn’t seem to enjoy his cigar, and he had that queer look in his face which men call despair. ’Pon my honor, I would rather be a bird than a man any day. We feathered folk don’t sigh and abandon hope when things go wrong. Why, the commonest little sparrow in the garden would chirp his contempt if anybody suggested to him that he should lie down and die just because he couldn’t find an insect under the first leaf he turned over. Die, indeed! Not he! He works all the harder, and is very likely to be rewarded by a fine fat grub under the next bush.
It was quite evident that the Guv’nor had not realized the length of Schwartz’s absence when that gentleman reappeared. He looked up, rather miserably, and said: