"Listen to this, Rene," I said, "and see if you catch anything I might have missed."
Rene looked discomfited, but he didn't stop up his ears.
When I came to the part, "'Tell me what thy lordly name is/On the Night's Plutonian shore....'" the dodo looked up and said, "Isadore."
Clearly, this was it, although I couldn't recall that any of the questions in the poem were to the point.
I got to, "'On the morrow he will leave me/As my hopes have flown before.'/Then the bird said...."
"Ask me more," said the dodo without missing a beat.
I read on, getting excited. "'Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe,/And forget this lost Lenore.'/Quoth the Dodo...."
"Give me more," he supplied, pointing his beak at the alcohol tap.
I gave him another cup and continued, sure that he must be going to say something relevant to Uncle Izzy's fortune.
"'Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—Tell me, tell me, I implore!' Quoth the Dodo...."