“I ought to have walked with you that day,” she said in a very low tone.  The parrot opened his eyes and looked at them as though he were striving to catch his cue.

“Of course you ought.”  But as he said this he smiled and there was no offence in his voice.  “I dare say you didn’t guess how much I thought of it.  And then I was a bear to you.  I always am a bear when I am not pleased.”

“Peas, peas, peas,” said the parrot.

“I shall be a bear to that brute of a bird before long.”

“What a very queer bird he is.”

“He is a public nuisance,—­and so is the old lady who brought him here,” This was said quite in a whisper.  “It is very odd, Miss Masters, but you are literally the only person in all Dillsborough in regard to whom I have any genuine feeling of old friendship.”

“You must remember a great many.”

“But I did not know any well enough.  I was too young to have seen much of your father.  But when I came back at that time you and I were always together.”

“Gedder, gedder, gedder,” said the parrot.

“If that bird goes on like that I’ll speak to the guard,” said Mr. Morton with affected anger.  “Polly mustn’t talk,” said the old lady waking up.

“Tok, tok, tok, tok,” screamed the parrot.  Then the old lady threw a shawl over him and again went to sleep.

“If I behaved badly I beg your pardon,” said Mary.

“That’s just what I wanted to say to you, Miss Masters,—­only a man never can do those things as well as a lady.  I did behave badly, and I do beg your pardon.  Of course I ought to have asked Mr. Twentyman to come with us.  I know that he is a very good fellow.”

“Indeed he is,” said Mary Masters, with all the emphasis in her power.  “Deedy is, deedy is, deedy is, deedy is,” repeated the parrot in a very angry voice about a dozen times under his shawl, and while the old lady was remonstrating with her too talkative companion their tickets were taken and they ran into the Hinxton Station.  “If the old lady is going on to Cheltenham we’ll travel third class before we’ll sit in the same carriage again with that bird,” said Morton laughing as he took Mary into the refreshment-room.  But the old lady did not get into the same compartment as they started, and the last that was heard of the parrot at Hinxton was a quarrel between him and the guard as to certain railway privileges.

When they had got back into the railway carriage Morton was very anxious to ask whether she was in truth engaged to marry the young man as to whose good fellowship she and the parrot had spoken up so emphatically, but he hardly knew how to put the question.  And were she to declare that she was engaged to him, what should he say then?  Would he not be bound to congratulate her?  And yet it would be impossible that any word of such congratulation should pass his lips?  “You will stay a month at Cheltenham?” he said.