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The shrieks of three Parrots, getting the primal airing of

summer in the garden outside the window where I sit, ought to

suggest a few good stories of the witticisms uttered by the dear,

clever creatures; but no, for they have been all the winter in the

kichen, half torpid, wholly gorged, and stupidly silent. With

the buttercups and daisies their voices are coming back, but

apparently not their wits, for their speech is all inarticulate,

though there is plenty of it. If they lose conversational

powers, though, they learn toleration and good camaraderie in

the basement regions. Happening to look into the kitchen

to-day, about the dinner hour, I saw two plates filled with

“ bits ” touching one another on the table, at one of which the

cat was busily engaged, while at the other Polly No. 3 was

sorting out the choice morsels. Now and then, both choices fell

on the same fragment: then the cat pulled and the Parrot

pulled, and the comestible decided the question according to

its elasticity, but all was done in perfect amity. Night after night

four cats and three Psittacidce (please revise the orthography of

this word, Mr. Secretary) sleep the sleep of the just and the

satiated, divided only by a few impotent wires between feathers

and claws, in my kitchen. Day after day the green trio prome¬

nade at will, and even tweak the unwary tails of the variously

coloured quartette, and peace and harmony still reign unbroken.

On one point only do they disagree—the cats want to sleep in

the day when the Parrots are widest awake and readiest with

their beaks ; and the Polls feel tired and ready for bed at the

hour when the tide of life leaps highest in feline veins. They

are still arguing the question, and I shall be told when a settle¬

ment is arrived at. Meanwhile it is most important that mice

should not get a footing in the dresser drawers, and the kitten

of five tender weeks must be introduced to cockroaches by its

three doting elders, so that night and day are alike lively in the

kingdom of saucepans.


My bird-room proper is a desert, occupied only by mice

and two Pekin Nightingales, who hugely appreciate the absence

of winged company. “ The fewer the Pekins the more the grub

for the Pekins that remain ” is their motto, and though there is a

flaw in the arrangement somewhere, I cannot detect it, for it

takes the 3^olk of one egg ever}^ day to feed the pair in possession,

just as it used to take the yolk of one egg every day to feed the

birds when the room was full of them. Perhaps the mice know

something about this, but if the} r do they are ver} r careful to

keep their information to themselves, and regularly sweep up all

traces of their presence from around and about the food tins.



