104 The Marquess of Tavistock—A Study in Feminine Psychology


went any distance away. Occasionally, I would hear her loud, sweet

whistling as she crossed the field to some oak trees a few hundred yards

off, but that was the limit of her excursions.


Then the unexpected happened. She fell in love at last! Earlier

in the winter I had obtained a parr of Mealy Rosellas. They were not

a very good pair, and the hen soon died of a rather curious ailment,

leaving her husband a disconsolate widower. What the hen Barnard

saw in him I cannot imagine, but the fact remains that she fell for him

utterly and completely ! Her behaviour was very amusing. She

was a larger and far more powerful bird than he and could have chewed

him up in a minute had she desired to do so, but she knew perfectly

well that if there is one thing more than another that a gentleman

Broadtail appreciates in his fiancee it is a timid and modest behaviour,

so, for the first time in her life, she became really coy. It is perfectly

certain that she was not really in the least afraid of the Mealy. He had

been most polite from the first; indeed, I am sure that the rapturous

whistle: “ What a perfectly divine creature ! ” which struck


unexpectedly on her ear as she toured the aviaries in search of fresh

conquests for her beak, effected, at long last, the conquest of her

heart. Ho one had ever called her that before ! So day after day she

came to the Mealy’s aviary and settled on it and near it, though if ever

he approached her very closely she edged demurely away.


Poor old thing ! I am afraid I treated her rather badly, though it

was just a little her own fault. For a time I was tempted to make her

happy by releasing her lover, but I really did not dare, for fear of the

mischief they might do by fighting. Even as an unattached spinster

she had been far too rowdy ; as a triumphant bride, she would have

maimed half the Broadtails in the collection ! Moreover, I did not in

the least want hybrids and someone else required the Mealy, so I

hardened my heart and sent him away.


A few days later she was back on the Cock Barnard’s aviary and

as hen Parrakeets make far less fuss about a change of partners than

cocks do, I assumed that she had decided to make the best of a bad

job and forget her idyll. But in a very few moments I noticed something

in her demeanour which had not been there when she had sat on the

.aviary at the time of her release. There was a nasty intentness about



