“Well, we’ll see,” said Gannett. “I shall know what to think if it does die.”
“I shall never see that bird again,” said Rogers, shaking his head as the Chief took up the cage and handed it to the steward, who was to accompany him home with it.
The couple left the ship and proceeded down the East India Dock Road side by side, the only incident being a hot argument between a constable and the engineer as to whether he could or could not be held responsible for the language in which the parrot saw fit to indulge when the steward happened to drop it.
The engineer took the cage at his door, and, not without some misgivings, took it upstairs into the parlour and set it on the table. Mrs. Gannett, a simple-looking woman, with sleepy brown eyes and a docile manner, clapped her hands with joy.
“Isn’t it a beauty?” said Mr. Gannett, looking at it; “I bought it to be company for you while I’m away.”
“You’re too good to me, Jem,” said his wife. She walked all round the cage admiring it, the parrot, which was of a highly suspicious and nervous disposition, having had boys at its last place, turning with her. After she had walked round him five times he got sick of it, and in a simple sailorly fashion said so.
“Oh, Jem,” said his wife.
“It’s a beautiful talker,” said Gannett hastily, “and it’s so clever that it picks up everything it hears, but it’ll soon forget it.”
“It looks as though it knows what you are saying,” said his wife. “Just look at it, the artful thing.”
The opportunity was too good to be missed, and in a few straightforward lies the engineer acquainted Mrs. Gannett of the miraculous powers with which he had chosen to endow it.