"Come now, find a rhyme to that, Mr. Rhymster!" said Mr. Muki Bagotay. The wretch was apostrophizing me.—Rhymster, indeed!
"Don't go near it!" cried Bessy; "he might bite your hand, and then you would not be able to paint me."
They'd terrify me, eh? It only needed that. I instantly went straight for the bird. I would have done so had it been the double-headed Russian eagle itself. Was it divination which made me hit upon the proper word to say to such a human-voiced monster? "Give me your head!" said I. And at that word the terrible wretch bobbed down his head till he was actually standing on his curved beak, while I scratched his head with my index finger, which gratified him so much that he began to flutter his wings.
Then I hazarded a second command.
"Give me your foot!"
And then, to the general amazement, the parrot raised its formidable three-pronged foot and clasped me tightly round the index finger with its claws; then it seized my thumb with its other foot, and allowed me to lift it from the table. Nor was that all. While I held it on my hand, just as the mediæval huntsmen held their falcons, the parrot bent its head over my hand and began to distribute kisses; but finally he went through every variation of the kiss till it was a perfect scandal. The ladies laughed. "Who ever could have taught him?"
"I got the bird during the lifetime of my late lamented husband," explained the lady of the house, with some confusion.
Finally, the conquered sphinx affectionately confided to me his name: "Little Koko! Darling Koko!" But I transferred Koko from my fist to his cage, and put him on to the swinging ring, which he seized, and began to climb upwards with his beak. He was a veritable triped! On settling comfortably in his ring, he made me a low bow, and cried with a naïve inflexion of voice—"Your humble servant!"
"Positively marvellous!" gasped the lady-mother; "you ought really to be a tamer of animals!"
"I mean to be."