Page:Good Night (1907, Gates).djvu/20

, patois, but triumphant. She paced the horizontal piece that gave her perch the form of a cross. She pu-r-red and ga-r-red. She swung by her curved beak and one leathery foot, shrilling her “Buenos dias, señor!” Then, as the padre hung the cage to a nail in the trellis built against the wall, she changed her performance to the clamorous repeating of a mass.

Padre Alonzo was shocked. “Sst! sst!” he chided; “thou wicked big-ears!”

The noon angelus was ringing. He caught up book and gown. But before going he pulled at Loretta’s gaudy tail, not unkindly, and chuckled as she edged toward Tony with many a naïve and fetching cock of her gray head.