“Have you heard about the parrot?” he asked at once. “ ’Pon my soul I’m awfully sorry. The moment he saw the monkey I’d brought down as a surprise for you he squawked out ‘Rats to you, sir!’ and the blessed monkey made one spring at him, got him by the neck and whirled him round like a rattle. He was as dead as mutton by the time I’d got him out of the little beggar’s paws. Always been such a friendly little beast, the monkey has, should never have thought he’d got it in him to see red like that. Can’t tell you how sorry I feel about it, and now of course you’ll hate the sight of the monkey.”

“Not at all,” said Groby sincerely. A few hours earlier the tragic end which had befallen his parrot would have presented itself to him as a calamity; now it arrived almost as a polite attention on the part of the Fates.

“The bird was getting old, you know,” he went on, in explanation of his obvious lack of decent regret at the loss of his pet. “I was really beginning to wonder if it was an unmixed kindness to let him go on living till he succumbed to old age. What a charming little monkey!” he added, when he was introduced to the culprit.