The next morning when Judy told Horace what Honey had said about the new air-brush machine, he was not pleased at all. Muttering that young Forrest Dean was more interested in the artists his father employed than in the work he was supposed to be doing, Horace made an attack on his breakfast that sent a fried egg skimming through the air like a flying saucer.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” screeched his parrot from his cage near the kitchen window.
Fortunately for the doctor’s peace of mind, the parrot went to sleep early, but he also awoke at the crack of dawn. This morning he was especially noisy.
“At least,” Judy laughed, as Horace mopped up the egg, “he isn’t calling names the way he usually does.”
“No?” asked Horace.
The egg incident had started the parrot off. Now he was sidling from one end of his perch to the other and screeching, “Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!”
This was by no means the only word in the parrot’s vocabulary, but it was the one he most frequently used. It made Judy think of Lorraine’s wish.
“She wished she could trust Arthur, and then she asked me if I could trust Peter if I believed he was a cheat. What do you think she meant by that?”
“Cheat! Cheat!” shrieked the parrot.
“There! You’ve started him off again. Quiet, Plato!” commanded Horace.