didn’t like parrots and she couldn’t stand Ginger’s profane habits of speech.  I was attached to the bird for my brother the sailor’s sake.  My brother the sailor was a pet of mine when we were little tads and he’d sent Ginger to me when he was dying.  I didn’t see any sense in getting worked up over his swearing.  There’s nothing I hate worse’n profanity in a human being, but in a parrot, that’s just repeating what it’s heard with no more understanding of it than I’d have of Chinese, allowances might be made.  But Emily couldn’t see it that way.  Women ain’t logical.  She tried to break Ginger of swearing but she hadn’t any better success than she had in trying to make me stop saying ‘I seen’ and ‘them things.’  Seemed as if the more she tried the worse Ginger got, same as me.

“Well, things went on like this, both of us getting raspier, till the Climax came.  Emily invited our minister and his wife to tea, and another minister and his wife that was visiting them.  I’d promised to put Ginger away in some safe place where nobody would hear him . . .  Emily wouldn’t touch his cage with a ten-foot pole . . . and I meant to do it, for I didn’t want the ministers to hear anything unpleasant in my house.  But it slipped my mind . . .  Emily was worrying me so much about clean collars and grammar that it wasn’t any wonder . . . and I never thought of that poor parrot till we sat down to tea.  Just as minister number one was in the very middle of saying grace, Ginger, who was on the veranda outside the dining room window, lifted up his voice.  The gobbler had come into view in the yard and the sight of a gobbler always had an unwholesome effect on Ginger.  He surpassed himself that time.  You can smile, Anne, and I don’t deny I’ve chuckled some over it since myself, but at the time I felt almost as much mortified as Emily.  I went out and carried Ginger to the barn.  I can’t say I enjoyed the meal.  I knew by the look of Emily that there was trouble brewing for Ginger and James A. When the folks went away I started for the cow pasture and on the way I did some thinking.  I felt sorry for Emily and kind of fancied I hadn’t been so thoughtful of her as I might; and besides, I wondered if the ministers would think that Ginger had learned his vocabulary from me.  The long and short of it was, I decided that Ginger would have to be mercifully disposed of and when I’d druv the cows home I went in to tell Emily so.  But there was no Emily and there was a letter on the table . . . just according to the rule in story books.  Emily writ that I’d have to choose between her and Ginger; she’d gone back to her own house and there she would stay till I went and told her I’d got rid of that parrot.