Miss Kezia positively jumped; she jumped quite badly. She found herself staring into a grey old face, into a pair of eyes that seemed to have looked into all the wickedness of the world. She was not alone in the Stronghold. A grey parrot sat on the back of a chair and returned her gaze with an insolent _sang froid_. "Get out!" he adjured her. "You’re a disy, you are!" The dissipated wrinkles round his old eyes added to his _blasé_ air of knowing all things. "Old meddlar!" he screamed at her in sudden anger. "Old meddlar,—meddlar-meddlar-meddlar," and he sank into sudden heavy silence. He was a particularly ugly specimen of his kind; he was scarce of feathers, on his poll there was a nasty wound, and one leg had very obviously at some time been broken and very badly reset. His self-admiration, nevertheless, was so absurdly apparent that it raised an intense irritation in Miss Kezia’s mind. His air of superiority was aggressive; his little beady eye told her she was dirt. They stared at each other. Then Miss Kezia’s attention was drawn suddenly to a box on the table. Under the circumstances she was not really much surprised to observe that its lid was slowly rising. Across her mind there flitted, with a vague discomfort, the memory of Irish superstition, of the Irish belief in fairies and "such rubbish." She gave herself an angry shake and approached the box. As she did so a small brown head appeared in the aperture, a small brown body followed it, and a thin little mouse scudded across the table and disappeared. Miss Kezia waged a deadly war with mice; the faintest suggestion of a nibble anywhere in the house resulted in traps—a whole army of traps—up and down stairs. But now she stood and watched mouse after mouse push up the box lid, alight on the table with a little thud, and disappear. She counted six mechanically, and then she awoke to full realisation of the enormity of what was happening. She approached the box, and with a firm hand pushed down the lid and put a heavy book upon it. Of the fact that the box was empty she remained in ignorance. Then she opened the door and went out on to the landing. She looked down into the hall, and beheld the decorous Sarah, capless, wispy, her apron torn, standing upon one of the staid hall chairs and screaming. Perhaps that gave Miss Kezia as severe a shock as any she had yet received. But it also acted as a swift and very emphatic brain-clearer. No douche of cold water was ever more effective in its action. "Sarah!"