“Captain Hunken’s parrot?” echoed Cai, genuinely surprised; for, in his experience, this bird was remarkable, if at all, for an obese lethargy.  It could talk, to be sure.  Now and again it would ejaculate “Scratch Polly,” or “Polly wants a kiss,” in a perfunctory way; but on the whole he had never known a more comfortable or a less loquacious bird.

“He—­he made a communication to me this afternoon,” said Mrs Bowldler delicately; “or, as you might prefer to put it, he passed a remark.”

“What was it?”

Mrs Bowldler cast a glance behind her at the gas jet.  “I really couldn’t, sir!  Not even if you were to put out the light; and as a gentleman you won’t press it.”

“Certainly not,” Cai assured her.  He mused.  “It’s odd now; but I’ve always regarded that parrot as rather a dull bird:  though of course I’ve never hinted that to ’Bias—­to Captain Hunken.”

“He wasn’t dull this afternoon,” asseverated Mrs Bowldler.  “Oh, not by any manner of means!”

“Has he ever—­er—­annoyed you in this way before?”

“Never, sir.”

“Has the boy ever heard him use—­er—­this kind o’ language?”

“Which if you understand me, sir,” explained Mrs Bowldler still more delicately, “the remark in question would not apply to a male party:  not by any stretch.  You may answer me, sir, that—­the feathered tribes not being Christians—­they don’t calculate who’s listening, but behave as the spirit moves them, like Quakers.  To which I answer you, sir, that makes it all the worse.  As it transpired, Palmerston was at the moment brushing down these very stairs, here, in the adjoining:  which some might call it luck and others again Providence.  But put it we’d happened to be cleaning out the room together, I must have sunk through the floor, and what would have happened to the boy’s morals I leave you to guess.”

Cai had to allow the cogency of this.

“As a matter of fact, sir,” Mrs Bowldler continued, “I sounded Palmerston later.  He declares to me he has never heard the creature use any bad language; and I believe him, for he went on to say that if he had, he’d have mentioned it to me.  But you see my position, sir?  It might even have happened with you two single gentlemen in the room. . . .  Stay another twenty-four hours in the house I will not, with the chance of it staring me in the face.”

Cai rubbed his chin.  “I see,” said he after a moment.  “Well, it’s awkward, but I’ll speak to Captain Hunken.”

He did so, almost as soon as he and ’Bias had gloomily finished their supper—­a repast which largely consisted of odds-and-ends (the debree, in Mrs Bowldler’s language) of yester-night’s banquet.  Each, as he ate, unconsciously compared it—­such is our frail humanity—­less with the good cheer of which it should have been a reminder than with the fresh abundance of Mrs Bosenna’s larder.  A bachelor table and bachelor habits are all very well—­until you have tasted the other thing.