Bessie, with more perception, saw the embarrassment, turned round from Agatha, went up to the cockatoo in his cage, and asked in a pleasant voice if Magdalen would show him to her, and tell her his name. Angela was glad enough to break off poor Susan’s questioning, and come forward, with the child still clinging, to incite the bird to display the rose colour under his crest, put up a grey claw to shake hands, and show off his vocabulary, laughing herself and acting merriment as she did so, in hopes to inspire Lena. “Come, Ben, tell how you were picked up under a gum tree, quite a baby, a little grey ball, and brought over in the shepherd’s pocket for a present to the little Boss, and how we fed you and nursed you till you turned all rose-colour and lovely! There! put up your crest and make red revelations. Can’t you speak? Fetch him a banana, Lena. That will open his mouth.” At sight of the banana, the bird put his head on one side and croaked in a hoarse whisper, “Yo ho!” “No, you need not be afraid of any more sailors’ language,” said Angela. “They were as careful as possible on board. I overheard once, ‘Hold hard, Tom, Polly Pink is up there, and she’s a regular lady born!” Whereupon Polly indulged in a ridiculous chuckle, holding the banana cleverly in one foot, while Angela laughed and chattered more and more nervously, but only succeeded in disgusting the visitors by what Susan at least took for unbecoming flippancy. “_That_ Sister,” said Susan, as they drove away, “does not seem to me at all the person to have the charge of Henry’s poor little girl!” “I wish she had not thrust herself in,” said Bessie, “to prevent me from getting on with the child over the cockatoo.” “She calls herself a Sister! I don’t understand it, for she seems to have been bent on marrying poor Henry.” “She never took any vows.” “Then why does she wear a ridiculous cap over all that hair?” By and by they were met by Bernard Underwood striding along. “Holloa! have you seen Angel and her darling? She is a perfect slave to the little thing, and one only gets fragments of her.” “She seems very fond of her,” said Bessie. “Just kept her alive, you see. Poor old Angel! She is all for one thing at a time! Are you going up to Clipstone?” “I think we shall find Phyllis at Beechcroft.” “Yes, she is driving there to lunch, and Angel is to bring the little cornstalk over to make friends with our Lily! I trust the creature goes to sleep now, and I may get a word out of Angel!” Wherewith he dashed on, and the two ladies agreed that “those Underwoods seemed to be curiously impulsive.”