There, as I think I mentioned before, the Fortescue boys kept several other pets. There was a large white cockatoo with a lemon crest, named Joey, which frightened and puzzled me horribly until I came to understand its odd faculty of imitating every person and animal about the place. It would ‘miaouw’ like a cat, a most disturbing sound, for every squirrel hates cats next to hawks and weasels; would bark so realistically that Mrs. Fortescue’s white Pomeranian was always stirred up to reply, and the two would go on and on, the wily old bird always starting up afresh whenever the dog stopped, until poor Pom nearly had a fit and grew quite hoarse. I shall never forget the first time he imitated me to my face. It gave me a most severe shock, for he did it so well that for a moment I believed that one of my relations was actually in the room. One thing I liked him for: he was devoted to Jack, and invariably bade him a grave ‘good morning’ when he brought my cage down before breakfast. He lived on a perch, to which he was chained by one leg, and up and down this he would sidle by the hour, with one eye cocked for mischief. Sometimes, when all was quiet, he would talk to himself in a language quite unlike that which my master and his family used. The boys said it was some African lingo which Joey had learnt ages ago in his native land. Altogether a most uncanny bird! Harry had a number of pet mice in wire cages. They were not the least atom like any of the mice I had ever seen in the wood. These were of the queerest colours—piebald—and some of them had marks on their backs just the shape of a saddle. Uninteresting I called them, but Harry was very fond of them, and used to take them out and let them run all over him. In the darkest corner of the long, low room was the one creature that, from the first moment I saw it, interested me more than all the others put together. All day long it lay hidden in its hay bed and never moved, but slept quietly as a dormouse in its winter nest. In fact, I never set eyes on it at all until one night in August, when the evenings had begun to draw in and I happened to be left a little later than usual in the bowling-alley. No sooner had the room become dusk than I heard from the tiny cage a little twittering, more like a young bird’s voice than anything else, and presently caught sight of a dainty little head poked out of the hay, with two of the largest, most liquid black eyes I ever saw. I gazed in wonder, for the animal was so like myself that I felt sure it was a squirrel, though I had never dreamed that any squirrel existed so tiny as this. Just then in came the two boys together. [Illustration: HE IMITATED ME TO MY FACE] ‘Hulloa!’ cried Harry, ‘Lops is awake. Bring Nipper to have a look at him, Jack.’ Jack took me out of my cage, and I jumped as usual on to his shoulder and nibbled his ear by way of a kiss. He walked across to the other cage and set me down in front of it.