Whether she had ever really been in love with the lieutenant is another question I must leave unanswered. It is only barely conceivable. To be sure, girls do fall in love with the most improbable men: even short and puffy ones; and perhaps the lieutenant’s strange oaths bewitched her in some inexplicable way. The only evidence of practical romance I can bring forward, is that the lieutenant did undoubtedly present Miss Barbara on one of his home-comings from distant parts with a grey parrot with a red tail. To be sure, he may have found the bird an intolerable nuisance; but this is an ill-natured suggestion. Whether this gift was intended as a hint, whether the parrot was meant as a dove and harbinger of a coming proposal, or whether it was an economical return for much liquid refreshment, the world will never know, for the same night the lieutenant’s inglorious career came to an equally inglorious end. This combination of what might, with a little violence, be construed as a lover’s gift with the tragic loss of the lover, was the turning-point in Miss Barbara’s life. Henceforth she convinced herself that she had been engaged to marry Charles, and she vowed herself to perpetual spinsterhood and the care of the parrot. The care of the parrot was no such easy matter. The bird had made a long journey in the lieutenant’s cabin, and had acquired all the lieutenant’s most picturesque expressions. He was not, therefore, a bird you could admit into general society with any feeling of comfort, for although he was generally sulky in the presence of strangers, he would occasionally, and when you least expected them, rap out a string of uncomplimentary references to their personal appearance, and consign them, body and soul, to unmentionable localities, with a clearness of utterance which left no doubt as to his meaning. When Papa Pennymint died, it was found that linseed had not been a commodity for which the demand had been sufficient to build up anything approaching a fortune. As a matter of fact, the old man had died just in time to avoid bankruptcy, and the two ladies had been obliged to sell their pretty home and to take refuge in Pomander Walk, out of reach of the genteel friends who had known them in the days of their prosperity. Of course the bird had come with them; but he had not left his language behind, and Barbara was forced to keep him shut up in the little back parlour, out of earshot. There she spent at least one hour with him every day, listening, as she told the sympathising Walk, to her dead lover’s voice; and it was this constant companionship with the loquacious bird which had fostered and developed in her mind the legend of her unhappy love. [Illustration: SHE SPENT AT LEAST ONE HOUR WITH HIM EVERY DAY, LISTENING, AS SHE TOLD THE SYMPATHISING WALK, TO HER DEAD LOVER’S VOICE]