The dogs growled and put their tails between their legs, crouched in corners and behind anything that yielded a temporary barricade. Gertie and Lion usually retired when these fits set in. Not that he threw things at either of _them_—he knew better than that. But he swore fearfully, and that frightened Gertie worse than the boots and the pillows; so she would motion to her dear old Lion, and they would creep out quietly and leave grandfather to it. It had been a whim of Heckett’s when he was brought home with a cracked skull from one of his midnight wanderings to have his bed brought in among the animals. ‘They’d be company,’ he said. ‘He didn’t want to lie alone, with no end of horrible things dancing across his brain.’ Gertie’s little room was upstairs. She had slept there ever since she could remember. They had two other rooms—one on the same floor as Gertie’s, and one behind the animals’ room, where Heckett slept when he was well. The house was three floors high, so that Heckett occupied two, and the ground floor, with an open shop, was let to a gentleman in the old clothes line, who shut it up at night, and went to another shop of his higher up the street, where he lived. When Gertie and Lion, were gone away, Heckett would lie and curse to his heart’s content, and he had a companion who used to curse in chorus. There was a parrot among this strange collection who swore like a trooper, and who, since he had come to live with Heckett, had considerably improved his vocabulary. It was grotesque but supremely awful to listen to the grey-haired reprobate shrieking and blaspheming and the parrot mocking him. Sometimes Heckett would lose his temper and swear at the bird, then the bird would swear back at him, and a cursing match, not to be equalled in the Dials, would take place. Heckett would get so mad while he lay there helpless, that he would threaten the bird with summary vengeance. The bird caught up his threats at last, and occasionally Mr. Heckett’s visitors would be startled to hear a voice from somewhere in the corner suddenly shriek out,—‘Bless you, I’ll have your blood!’ or ‘Bless your beautiful eyes, you screeching devil, I’ll wring your beautiful neck!’ The adjectives are slightly altered, but the sense of the parrot’s mild observations remains unimpaired. As Heckett grew better, the wordy warfare between himself and the parrot increased in vigour, till a person, listening outside, would have believed that two horribly depraved wretches were about to commence a murderous struggle. What with grandfather’s language and the parrot’s language, poor Gertie got more uncomfortable every day. The child had one of those sensitive natures which are quick to appreciate the difference between right and wrong.