258 BIRDS AND MAN 



her with all his worldly possessions, which consisted 

 of the parrot and cage. Eventually he succeeded 

 his father as tenant of the Lamb, where he died many 

 years ago : the widow was grey when I first knew 

 her and old like her parrot ; and she was like the bird 

 too in her youthful spirit and the brilliance of her 

 eyes. 



Her young sailor had picked up the bird at Vera 

 Cruz in Mexico. He saw a girl standing in the market 

 place with the parrot on her shoulder. She was 

 talking and singing to the bird, and the bird was 

 talking, whistling, and singing back to her singing 

 snatches of songs in Spanish. It was a wonderful 

 bird, and he was enchanted and bought it, and brought 

 it all the way back to England and Wiltshire. It 

 was, the girl had told him, just five years old, and as 

 fifty years had gone by it was, when I first knew it, 

 or was supposed to be, fifty-five. In its Wiltshire 

 home it continued to talk and sing in Spanish, and 

 had two favourite songs, which delighted everybody, 

 although no one could understand the words. By 

 and by it took to learning words and sentences in 

 English, and spoke less in Spanish year after year 

 until in about ten to twelve years that language had 

 been completely forgotten. Its memory was not as 

 good as that of Humboldt's celebrated parrot of the 



