ird, which,
instead of responding as expected, "squawked," as our phonetic language
has it, and, opening a beak imitated from a tooth-drawing instrument of
the good old days, made a shrewd nip at Kitty's forefinger. She drew it
back with a jerk.

"An' is that the way your part tahks, Mrs. Hopkins?"

"Talks, bless you, Kitty! why, that parrot hasn't said a word this ten
year. He used to say Poor Poll! when we first had him, but he found it
was easier to squawk, and that's all he ever does nowadays,--except bite
once in a while."

"Well, an' to be sure," Kitty answered, radiant as she rose from her
defeats, "if you'll kape a cat that does n't know a mouse when she sees
it, an' a dog that only barks for his livin', and a part that only
squawks an' bites an' niver spakes a word, ye must be the best-hearted
woman that's alive, an' bliss ye, if ye was only a good Catholic, the
Holy Father 'd make a saint of ye in less than no time!"

So Mistress Kitty Fagan got in her bit of Celtic flattery, in spite of
her three successive discomfitures.

"You may come up now, Kitty," said Mr. Gridley over the stairs. He had
just finished and sealed a letter.

"Well, Kitty, how are things going on up at The Poplars? And how does
our young lady seem to be of late?"

"Whisht! whisht! your honor."

Mr. Bradshaw's lessons had not been thrown away on his attentive
listener. She opened every door in the room, "by your lave," as she
said. She looked all over the walls to see if there was any old
stovepipe hole or other avenue to eye or ear. Then she went, in her
excess of caution, to the window. She saw nothing noteworthy except Mr.
Gifted Hopkins and the charge he convoyed, large and small, in the
distance. The whole living fleet was stationary for the moment, he
leaning on the fence with his cheek on his hand, in one of the attitudes
of the late Lord Byron; she, very near him, listening, apparently, in the
pose of Mignon aspirant au ciel, as rendered by Carlo Dolce Scheffer.

Kitty came back, apparently satisfied, and stood close to Mr. Gridley,
who told her to sit down, which she did, first making a catch at her
apron to dust the chair with, and then remembering that she had left that
part of her costume at home.--Automatic movements, curious.

Mistress Kitty began telling in an undertone of the meeting between Mr.
Bradshaw and Miss Badlam, and of the arrangements she made for herself as
the reporter of the occasion. She th