Page:Under the Sun.djvu/375

Rh salt spoon. At last, however, all seemed satisfactorily disposed of, when it was discovered that one of the cages was still empty, and a pensive voice from the chandelier drew all eyes upward. It was then discovered that a parrot had got its body inside one of the globes, and I volunteered to release it. So standing up on a chair, I took hold of the protruding tail and lifted the bird out. No sooner, however, did it find itself released than it made one violent effort to escape, and succeeded, leaving the tail in my hands!

I hastened to apologize and to offer the owner the tail, but the man would not accept either the apology or the feathers. On the contrary, he insisted that as I had spoiled the bird for sale I ought now to buy it.

And thus it was that we became possessed of the bird whose death I have already narrated. At first it had a dog’s life of it. I was very angry with it for foisting itself upon me; my wife disliked it for its tailless condition; while the parrot itself suspected both of us as having designs upon its remaining feathers. But my wife’s heart warmed to it at last, and the bird reciprocated the attachment. And when it died we were really sorry, and so, I think, was the parrot.

Meanwhile my wife was not satisfied with the purchase, and proceeded to select another bird for herself The result was a canary, as I feared; and lest the canary should be dull with only the parrot, a bullfinch was also bought; and finally, for no better reason that I saw than that “it would be just as easy to attend to three birds as to two,” a linnet. Of course the canary proved to be a hen bird, and the linnet, I still believe, is a sparrow. But of the bullfinch there can be no doubt. He looks a bullfinch all over.