“He’s very snappish, to be sure,” Felix said, with a smile, trying once more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird cautiously.  But Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions.  He was growing too old to put up with strangers.  He made a second vicious attempt to peck at the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he did so, in the usual discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or frightened parrot.

“Why, Felix,” Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a girlish gesture—­for even the terrors by which they were surrounded hadn’t wholly succeeded in killing out the woman within her—­“how clumsy you are!  You don’t understand one bit how to manage parrots.  I had a parrot of my own at my aunt’s in Australia, and I know their ways and all about them.  Just let me try him.”  She held out her soft white hand toward the sulky bird with a fearless, caressing gesture.  “Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!” she said, in English, in the conventional tone of address to their kind.  “Did the naughty man go and frighten her then?  Was she afraid of his hand?  Did Polly want a lump of sugar?”

On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly.  It preened its wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure.  Then it put forward its neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently between its beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short pressure, and at once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a very pleased and surprised expression.  The success of her skill flattered Muriel.  “There! it knows me!” she cried, with childish delight; “it understands I’m a friend!  It takes to me at once!  Pretty Poll!  Pretty Poll!  Come, Poll, come and kiss me!”

The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment knowingly on its perch.  Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones—­and in English—­“Pretty Poll!  Pretty Poll!  Polly wants a buss!  Polly wants a nice sweet bit of apple!”

For a moment M. Peyron couldn’t imagine what had happened.  Felix looked at Muriel.  Muriel looked at Felix.  The Englishman held out both his hands to her in a wild fervor of surprise.  Muriel took them in her own, and looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down her cheeks, one by one, unchecked.  They couldn’t say why, themselves; they didn’t know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of their own tongue, in the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird, thrilled through them instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor.  In some dim and unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves that this discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the terrible secret whose meshes encompassed them.