"Susan! why, you look half--" Miss Clegg collapsed at once heavily upon the haircloth-covered sofa. "I guess you'd better make me some tea," she suggested, and shut her eyes. Mrs. Lathrop had no doubt whatever on the subject. Hurrying out to the kitchen, she brewed a cup of the strongest possible tea in the fewest possible moments, and brought it in to the traveller. The latter drank with satisfaction, then leaned back with a sigh. "It was a auction!" she said in tones that gasped. Mrs. Lathrop could restrain her anxiety no longer. "Did you get anything with my--" she asked. "Yes; it's out in the hall with my shawl." "What did--" "It's a parrot," said Susan. "A parrot!" cried Mrs. Lathrop, betraying as much feeling as it was in her to feel. "Without any head," Susan added wearily. "Without any head!" Then Miss Clegg straightened up in her seat and opened her eyes. "There ain't no need o' bein' so surprised," she said in that peculiar tone with which one who has spent another's money always defends his purchase,--"it's a stuffed parrot without any head." "A stuffed parrot without any head!" Mrs. Lathrop repeated limply, and her tone was numb and indescribable. "How much did it--" she asked after a minute. "I bid it in for one dollar 'n' ninety-seven cents,--I was awful scared f'r fear it would go over your two dollars, an' it wasn't nothin' that I'd ever want, so I couldn't 'a' taken it off your hands if it _had_ gone over your money." "I wonder what I can do with it," her neighbor said feebly. "You must hang it in the window so high 't the head don't show." "I thought you said it didn't have no head." Miss Clegg quitted the sofa abruptly and came over to her own chair; the tea appeared to be beginning to take effect. "It _hasn't_ got no head! If it had a head, where would be the sense in hangin' it high a _tall_? It's your good luck, Mrs. Lathrop, 't it hasn't got no head, for the man said 't if it had a head it would 'a' brought four or five dollars easy." Mrs. Lathrop got up and went out into the hall to seek her parrot. When she brought it in and examined it by the light of the lamp, her expression became more than dubious. "What did _you_ get for your--" she asked at last. "I didn't get nothin'. I didn't see nothin' 't I wanted, 'n' I learned long ago 't an auction 's generally a good place f'r buyin' things 't you don't want after you've bought 'em. Now take that parrot o' yours!--I wouldn't have him 'f you was to offer him to me for a gift; not to speak o' his not havin' no head, he looks to me like he had moths in him,--you look at him by daylight to-morrow 'n' see if it don't strike you so too." Mrs. Lathrop was silent for a long time. Finally she said: "Did you go to the Orphan Asylum?"