“Bessie enjoyed it greatly.  She seemed to take a wicked satisfaction in making poor Jett ridiculous, and laughed and chuckled and scolded till the cat looked as if he were ready to drop from very shame.  Urging him on with, ‘Get up, get up, you lazy thing,’ she refused to be shaken off till his body was actually dragging on the floor, a sign of his complete humiliation.  As soon as he threw off his unwelcome burden, Jett always ran away to hide.  With his tail slinking, his ears drooping, and crawling rather than walking, he was the most abject-looking, miserable cat in existence.  Bessie meanwhile flirted herself saucily and chuckled with the conscious air of having done a very smart thing.”

CHAPTER VI

THE PARROT AT A PARTY

  A parrot there I saw, with gaudy pride
  Of painted plumes, that hopped from side to side.

“How did you happen to get away from the Morrises?” asked my brother.

The red-bird laughed heartily, as if the recollection were exceedingly amusing.

“Well,” said he, “it all came about through Johnny’s having a tea party.  For months he had been coaxing and begging his mother to invite his schoolfellows to the house and entertain them with games and plays and music, ending with a fine supper.  Early in the spring when he began talking of it, it was too cold, his mother said.  Then after a while it was too rainy, or too warm, or they were house-cleaning, or something, and so she kept putting him off from one time to another, hoping by deferring it to make him forget it.  The Morrises always spent the month of August at their seaside cottage, and the night before they left home, Johnny tried to get Mrs. Morris to promise that he might have the party the very first thing on their return.

“‘I’ll think about it, my dear,’ she answered.

“’Whenever you say you’ll think about it then I’m pretty sure not to get what I want,’ sighed Johnny.”

[Illustration:  The Summer Tanager.]

“His mother seemed to be much amused at this statement.  ’Oh, no, my son, it doesn’t always turn out that way; but you know it wouldn’t do for me to promise to have it just as soon as we get back,’ she objected.  ’I am always very busy just at our return.  It might be very inconvenient for me to prepare for a children’s evening at that time; but when I am ready I shall take pleasure in getting up a nice party for you sometime in the autumn.’

“This sounded well, but it was not definite enough to suit Johnny.  However he said no more at that time.  While the family were gone Bessie and I had the back porch to ourselves, and no one being there except the housemaid to whom she could display her superiority over me, she grew to be quite agreeable.  For some time before the Morrises had bought her, which was years and years before, long before Johnny was born, she had lived in a taxidermist’s shop.  The owner of the shop was also a bird dealer in a small way.  On account of her accomplishments he had held her at a price that few were willing or able to pay, and so she had been forced to stay with him a long time.  She much preferred being owned by a refined family to living in a dingy store, for she was a bird of luxurious tastes, she said.