"the lady with the gay macaw."
longfellow.
my sisters are much like other fellows' sisters, excepting lettice. that child is like no one but herself.
i used to tease the other girls for fun, but i teased lettice on principle—to knock the nonsense out of her. she was only eight, and very small, but, from the top row of her tight little curls to the rosettes on her best shoes, she seemed to me a mass of affectation.
strangers always liked lettice. i believe she was born with a company voice in her mouth; and she would flit like a butterfly from one grown-up person to another, chit-chattering, whilst some of us stood pounding our knuckles in our pockets, and tying our legs into knots, as we wished the drawing-room carpet would open and let us through into the cellar to play at catacombs.
[267]
that was how cocky came. lettice's airs and graces bewitched the old lady who called in the yellow chariot, and was so like a cockatoo herself—a cockatoo in a citron velvet bonnet, with a bird of paradise feather. when that old lady put up her eye-glass, she would have frightened a yard-dog; but lettice stood on tip-toes and stroked the feather, saying, "what a love-e-ly bird!" and next day came cocky—perch and all complete—for the little girl who loves birds. lettice was proud of cocky, but edward really loved him, and took trouble with him.
edward is a good boy. my mother called him after the black prince.
he and i disgraced ourselves in the eyes of the cockatoo lady, and it cost the family thirty thousand pounds, which we can ill afford to lose. it was unlucky that she came to luncheon the very day that edward and i had settled to dress up as early britons, in blue woad, and dine off earth-nuts in the shrubbery. as we slipped out at the side door, the yellow chariot drove up to the front. we had doormats on, as well as powder-blue, but the old lady was terribly shocked, and drove straight away, and did not return. nurse says she is my father's godmother, and has thirty thousand pounds, which she would have bequeathed to us if we had not offended her.[268] i take the blame entirely, because i always made the others play as i pleased.
we used to play at all kinds of things—concerts, circuses, theatricals, and sometimes conjuring. uncle patrick had not been to see us for a long time, when one day we heard that he was coming, and i made up my mind at once that i would have a perfectly new entertainment for him.
we like having entertainments for uncle patrick, because he is such a very good audience. he laughs, and cries, and claps, and thumps with his crutch, and if things go badly, he amuses the rest.
ever since i can remember anything, i remember an old print, called "the happy family," over our nursery fire-place, and how i used to wonder at that immovable cat, with sparrows on her back, sitting between an owl and a magpie. and it was when i saw edward sitting with benjamin the cat, and two sparrows he had brought up by hand, struggling and laughing because cocky would push itself, crest first, under his waistcoat, and come out at the top to kiss him—that an idea struck me; and i resolved to have a happy family for uncle patrick, and to act showman myself.
edward can do anything with beasts. he was absolutely necessary as confederate, but it was possible lettice might want to show off with cocky, and [269] i did not want a girl on the stage, so i said very little to her. but i told edward to have in the yard-dog, and practise him in being happy with the rest of the family pets. fred, the farm-boy, promised to look out for an owl. benjamin, the cat, could have got mice enough; but he would have eaten them before edward had had time to teach him better, so i set a trap. i knew a village-boy with a magpie, ready tamed.
bernard, the yard-dog, is a lumbering old fellow, with no tricks. we have tried. we took him out once, into a snow-drift, with a lantern round his neck, but he rescued nothing, and lost the lantern—and then he lost himself, for it was dark.
but he is very handsome and good, and i knew, if i put him in the middle, he would let anything sit upon him. he would not feel it, or mind if he did. he takes no notice of cocky.
benjamin never quarrels with cocky, but he dare not forget that cocky is there. and cocky sometimes looks at benjamin's yellow eyes as if it were thinking how very easily they would come out. but they are quite sufficiently happy together for a happy family.
the mice gave more trouble than all the rest, so i settled that lettice should wind up the mechanical mouse, and run that on as the curtain rose.
