10 
ALMOST HUMAN 
children were crowded round her cage — what mischief might be done 
before nightfall? He hastened to the spot. 
A woman in the crowd had a bag of apricots, 
“Would you mind giving me one of those?” asked Mr. Wilkie. “She 
might give it up in exchange for that, but I can’t get it otherwise, I’m 
sure.” 
The tempting fruit was willingly given, and held out before Mollie, 
“Now, Mollie,” he said, “if you bring that bottle into the other 
cage and give it to me you shall have this !” 
The bottle was dropped instantly and Mollie hastened off to her 
sleeping cage, where the bars are further apart, to get the dainty. 
“No, Mollie,” said Mr. Wilkie. “You haven’t brought the bottle. 
Give me the bottle, and this is yours.” 
She looked at him for a moment, thinking deeply. Then she turned 
and went for the bottle. Bringing it back as fast as she could walk, 
she thrust it through the bars with her right hand and held her left one 
out at the same time for her reward. As soon as she sat back to enjoy 
the sweets of obedience, a cry went up: 
“Why, she understood you!” 
“Yes,” replied Mr. Wilkie. “That is what we cannot make people 
believe; she does understand!” 
TEMPER. 
It was nearly dusk, after a broiling day. The visitors had gone, 
and Mr. Wilkie was homeward bound. Mollie watched him, enviously. 
It seemed cooler on the path; her cage was suffocatingly hot, and the 
coming thunderstorm seemed to be delaying unnecessarily. So forlorn 
did she look that he stopped before her cage and handed her the match 
he was just about to use as a pipe light. 
“Here, old girl; light my pipe for me!” 
Mollie took the lighted match, but she was attracted by a kookaburra 
that had just perched on the fence opposite. She could not be constrained 
to look away from the bird, and, in her abstraction, she let the match 
burn her fingers. Instantly she flung it away in a rage and curled 
herself up to sulk. But just as she did so, the kookaburra began to 
laugh — laugh as if he could not stop. 
Evidently she thought that Mr. Wilkie had got the bird to laugh, 
or was in some way directly responsible for the outrage, for she sprang 
up in an ungovernable rage, caught up one of her bags, and flung it with 
all her might at him. He tried to explain to her that the noisy fellow 
was trying to laugh down the fright he had got from an ibis just below 
