“Hush, Polly! be quiet, Polly!” croaked the other voice. “Eat your cracker and go to sleep.”
“Hold your tongue, Poll,” screamed the first. “Polly wants a cup of coffee.”
Hector, who was a new servant, stood looking this way and that, gasping and rolling up his eyes in terror, but the others, who were tolerably well acquainted, by hearsay at least, with Mr. Lilburn’s ventriloquial powers, had by this time recalled what they had heard on that subject, and went quietly about waiting upon the guests.
Croly and Mary Keith had been most interested listeners, and when an instant’s lull occurred, after the parrot-like screams, the former said: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am now fully convinced that we have, at least, one ventriloquist among us, though which of you it is I have not been quite able to decide.”
“It may, perhaps, be easier to decide who it is not,” remarked the elder Mr. Dinsmore, with an amused smile.
“Very true, sir,” said Croly, “and I have come to the conclusion that it is not yourself, Captain Raymond, Doctor Conly, or my friends Harold or Herbert Travilla.” With the last words he looked inquiringly at each of the other gentlemen present. Not one of them seemed to him to look conscious, and he felt that his question still remained unsolved.
Hector, still trembling with fright, and now and then sending a timorous glance in the direction of the door at which the tramps had last been heard, had listened in wondering surprise to the talk about the ventriloquist.
“What dat, Scip?” he asked in shaking undertones, plucking at the sleeve of a fellow servant, “dat vent-vent-erquis? Dis chile neber hear of dat sort of ting afore.”
“You jess g’long an’ look fer it then,” returned Scip loftily. “’Pears like maybe you find him in de parlor yonder behind de doah.”