A few doses of Peppo would, no doubt, have enabled me to endure this remarkable happening with fortitude and phlegm. Not having taken that specific, the thing had a devastating effect upon my nervous centres. I bounded back and upset a chair, while Bowles, his dignity laid aside, leaped silently towards the ceiling. It was the first time I had ever seen him lay off the mask, and even in that trying moment I could not help being gratified by the spectacle. It gave me one of those thrills that come once in a lifetime.
“For Gord’s sake!” ejaculated Bowles.
“Have a nut,” observed the hat-box, hospitably. “Have a nut.”
Bowles’s panic subsided.
“It’s a bird, sir. A parrot!”
“What the deuce does Ukridge mean,” I cried, becoming the outraged householder, “by cluttering up my rooms with his beastly parrots? I’d like that man to know——”
The mention of Ukridge’s name seemed to act on Bowles like a soothing draught. He recovered his poise.
“I have no doubt, sir,” he said, a touch of coldness in his voice that rebuked my outburst, “that Mr. Ukridge has good reasons for depositing the bird in our custody. I fancy he must wish you to take charge of it for him.”
“He may wish it——” I was beginning, when my eye fell on the clock. If I did not want to alienate my employer by keeping her waiting, I must be on my way immediately.
“Put that hat-box in the other room, Bowles,” I said. “And I suppose you had better give the bird something to eat.”