“Why didn’t you put ’em in a box?” asked McKinney, severely.  “You ain’t got sense enough to know the difference between a hair rope and a can of California apricots.”

“Put ’em in a box?” cried Curly.  “Why?  Them was ornyments!  Now you ain’t got a ornyment on your whole place, except a horned toad and four tarantulas in a teacup.  Now a real ornyment is somethin’ you put on the parlor table, man, and show it free and open.  It’s sort of sacred like.”

“Not for rats,” said McKinney.

“You’d better keep your eye on that parrot,” warned Doc Tomlinson.  “About to-morrow, you tell us what you find out.”

But on the morrow the mystery remained unsolved.  “One heel’s plumb gone,” said Curly, sighing.  “And they’ve begun on the toe of the other foot.”

Bill, the parrot, remained under increasing suspicion.  “He’s got a wall eye,” said McKinney, “and I never seen a wall eye in a man, woman, or mustang, that it didn’t mean bad.  This here bird ain’t no Hereford, nor yet a short-horn.  He’s a dogy that ain’t bred right, and he ain’t due to act right.”  All Curly could do was to shake his head, unpersuaded.

Meantime, there went on in the little cabin across the arroyo, a reproduction of an old, old drama.  Should we, after all, criticise these two descendants of the first sweet human woman of the world?  Consider; to their young and inexperienced eyes appealed all the fascinations of this august but tempting object, new, strange, appealing.  For a time their hearts were strong, upon their souls rested the ancient mandate of denial.  They gazed, short breathed, in awe, upon this radiantly bestriped, unspeakably fascinating, wholly and resplendently pulchritudinous creation.  They must have known that it was a part of the family pride, a part of the parlor—­a part, indeed, of the intermingled fabric of the civilization of Heart’s Desire!  And yet—­alas!

One morning the twins foregathered in the parlor.  The hour of temptation, as is always the case, found all things well ordered for the success of evil.

“Everybody’s gone,” whispered Suzanne.  “There ain’t nobody here at all.”

“Only Bill,” said Arabella, looking at the parrot, which regarded them with a badly bored aspect.  “I wonder if he’d tell?”

“Oh, dang it all!” remarked Bill; “I’m tired!”

“He’s awful,” remarked Arabella.  “He swears.  Folks that swears goes to the bad place.  Besides, Bill wouldn’t tell, would you, Bill?”

“He’ll go to sleep,” said Suzanne.  “Besides, we ain’t goin’ to bite off only just a little bit of a bite!  Nobody’ll never notice it.”

Twofold Eve edged up to the centre table.  “You first,” said Arabella.

“No, you.”

“You first,” insisted Arabella.  “I’m afraid.  Bill, he’s lookin’.”

“I ain’t afraid,” Suzanne asserted boldly, and stretched out her hand.