The Real Charlotte. 21 



pitiatory dainties at improper hours. The cockatoo had no 

 very clear recollection of the subsequent departure of Dr. 

 Mullen and his brother, the attorney, with their brides, on 

 their respective honeymoons, owing to the fact that Mr. 

 Mullen, the agent, brother of the two bridegrooms, had 

 prised open his beak, and compelled him to drink the 

 healths of the happy couples in the strongest and sweetest 

 whisky punch. 



The cockatoo's memory after this climax was filled with 

 vague comings and goings, extending over unknown tracts 

 of time. He remembered two days of disturbance, on each 

 of which a long box had been carried out of the house by 

 several men, and a crowd of people, dressed in black, had 

 eaten a long and clattering meal in the dining-room. He 

 had always remembered the second of these occasions with 

 just annoyance, because, in manoeuvring the long box 

 through the narrow hall, he had been knocked off his perch, 

 and never after that day had the person whom he had been 

 taught to call " Doctor " come to give him his daily lump of 

 sugar. 



But the day that enunciated itself most stridently from 

 the cockatoo's past life was that on which the doctor's niece 

 had, after many short visits, finally arrived with several 

 trunks, and a wooden case from which, when opened, 

 sprang four of the noisome creatures whom Miss Charlotte, 

 their owner, had taught him to call " pussies." A long era 

 of persecution then began for him, of robbery of his food, 

 and even attacks upon his person. He had retaliated by 

 untiring mimicry, by delusive invitations to food m the 

 manner of Miss Charlotte, and lastly, by the strangling of a 

 too-confiding kitten, whom he had lured, with maternal 

 mewings, within reach of his claws. That very day Miss 

 Charlotte's hand avenged the murder, and afterwards con- 

 veyed him, a stiff guilty lump of white feathers, to the top of 

 the kitchen press, from thenceforth never to descend, except 

 when long and patient picking had opened a link of his 

 chain, or when, on fine days, Norry fastened him to a 

 branch of the tall laurel that overhung the pig-stye. Norry 

 was his only friend, a friendship slowly cemented by a com- 

 mon hatred of the cats and Louisa ; indeed, it is probable 

 that but for occasional conversation with Norry he would 



