‘And why?’ asked the male bird.
‘Because I don’t choose,’ replied the female.
‘Truly a feminine form of resolution this,’ ejaculated the parrot. ‘I will borrow my master’s words and call it a woman’s reason, that is to say, no reason at all. Have you any objection to be more explicit?’
‘None whatever,’ retorted the jay, provoked by the rude innuendo into telling more plainly than politely exactly what she thought; ‘none whatever, sir parrot. You he-things are all of you sinful, treacherous, deceitful, selfish, devoid of conscience, and accustomed to sacrifice us, the weaker sex, to your smallest desire or convenience.’
‘Of a truth, fair lady,’ quoth the young Raja Ram to his bride, ‘this pet of thine is sufficiently impudent.’
‘Let her words be as wind in thine ear, master,’ interrupted the parrot. ‘And pray, Mistress Jay, what are you she-things but treacherous, false, ignorant, and avaricious beings, whose only wish in this world is to prevent life being as pleasant as it might be?’
‘Verily, my love,’ said the beautiful Chandravati to her bridegroom, ‘this thy bird has a habit of expressing his opinions in a very free and easy way.’
‘I can prove what I assert,’ whispered the jay in the ear of the princess.
‘We can confound their feminine minds by an anecdote,’ whispered the parrot in the ear of the prince.