“Splendid!”
“My parrot,” said Lady Lakenheath, including me in the conversation, “had a most peculiar attack last night. I cannot account for it. His health has always been so particularly good. I was dressing for dinner at the time, and so was not present at the outset of the seizure, but my niece, who was an eye-witness of what occurred, tells me he behaved in a most unusual way. Quite suddenly, it appears, he started to sing very excitedly; then, after awhile, he stopped in the middle of a bar and appeared to be suffering. My niece, who is a most warm-hearted girl, was naturally exceedingly alarmed. She ran to fetch me, and when I came down poor Leonard was leaning against the side of his cage in an attitude of complete exhaustion, and all he would say was, ‘Have a nut!’ He repeated this several times in a low voice, and then closed his eyes and tumbled off his perch. I was up half the night with him, but now he seems mercifully to have turned the corner. This afternoon he is almost his old bright self again, and has been talking in Swahili, always a sign that he is feeling cheerful.”
I murmured my condolences and congratulations.
“It was particularly unfortunate,” observed Ukridge, sympathetically, “that the thing should have happened last night, because it prevented Aunt Elizabeth going to the Pen and Ink Club dinner.”
“What!” Fortunately I had set down my cup by this time.
“Yes,” said Lady Lakenheath, regretfully. “And I had been so looking forward to meeting Stanley’s aunt there. Miss Julia Ukridge, the novelist. I have been an admirer of hers for many years. But, with Leonard in this terrible state, naturally I could not stir from the house. His claims were paramount. I shall have to wait till Miss Ukridge returns from America.”
“Next April,” murmured Ukridge, softly.
“I think, if you will excuse me now, Mr. Corcoran, I will just run up and see how Leonard is.”
The door closed.
“Laddie,” said Ukridge, solemnly, “doesn’t this just show——”