Coco, the snow-white cockatoo, on his perch high up in the roof dormer overlooking the court, is having the time of his life. To see and hear the better, he wobbles back and forth to the end of his wooden peg, steadying himself by his black beak, and then, straightening up, unfurls his yellow celery top of a crest and, with a quick toss of his head, shrieks out his delight. He wants to know what it is all about, and I don't blame him. No such hurrying and scurrying has been seen in the court-yard below since the morning the players came down from Paris and turned the sixteenth-century quadrangle into a stage-setting for an old-time comedy: new gravel is being raked and sifted over the open space; men on step-ladders are trimming up the vines and setting out plants on top of the kiosks; others are giving last touches to the tulip-beds and the fresh sod along the borders, while two women are scrubbing the chairs and tables under the arbors. As for the Inn's inhabitants, everybody seems to have lost their wits: Pierre has gone entirely mad. When butter, or eggs, or milk, or a pint of sherry--or something he needs, or thinks he needs--is wanted, he does not wait until his under-chef can bring it from the storage-cave where they are kept--he rushes out himself, grabbing up a basket, or pitcher, or cup as he goes, and comes back on the double-quick to begin again his stirring, chopping, and basting--the roasting-spit turning merrily all the while. Leà is even more restless. Her activities, however, are confined to clattering along the upstairs corridors, her arms full of freshly ironed clothes--skirts and things--and to the banging of chamber doors--one especially, behind which sits an old fishwoman, yellow as a dried mackerel and as stiff, helping a young girl dress. The only one who seems to have kept his head is Lemois. His nervousness is none the less in evidence, but he gets rid of his pent-up steam in a different way. He lets the others hustle, while he stands still just inside the gate giving orders to hurrying market boys with baskets of fish; signing receipts for cases filled with poultry and early vegetables just in by the morning train from Caen; or firing instructions to his gardeners and workmen--self-contained as a ball governor on a horizontal engine and seemingly as inert, yet an index of both pressure and speed. All this time Coco keeps up his hullabaloo, nobody paying the slightest attention. Suddenly there comes an answering cry and the cockatoo snaps his beak tight with a click and listens intently, his head on one side. It is the shriek of a siren--a long-drawn, agonizing wail that strikes the bird dumb with envy. Nearer it comes--nearer--now at the turn of the street; now just outside the gate, and in whirls Herbert's motor, the painter beside him.