had to be
told over for the third or fourth time, of the parrot, and old Mrs.
Wylie meeting Pete as she came in, and his thinking he'd only been there
about five minutes, and all the rest of it.

'And what did the Polly parrot talk about?' asked Elf. She had a picture
of a parrot in one of her books, and some rhymes about it.

'Oh,' answered Peterkin,' he said, "How d'ye do?" and "Pretty Poll," and
things like that.'

'He said queerer things than that; you know he--' I began. I saw Pete
didn't want to tell about the parrot copying the mysterious child that
Mrs. Wylie had spoken of, so I thought I'd tease him a bit by reminding
him of it. I felt sure he had got some of his funny ideas out of his
fairy stories in his head; that the little girl--for Mrs. Wylie had
spoken of a 'her'--was an enchanted princess or something like that, and
I wasn't far wrong, as you will see. But I didn't finish my sentence,
for Peterkin, who was sitting next me, gave me a sort of little kick,
not to hurt, of course, and whispered, 'I'll tell you afterwards.' So I
felt it would be ill-natured to tease him, and I didn't say any more,
and luckily the others hadn't noticed what I had begun. Blanchie was on
her knees in front of the fire toasting for us, and Elf was putting
lumps of sugar into the cups, to be ready.

Pete was as hungry as a hunter, and our sharp walk had given Clem and me
a fresh appetite, so we ate all the toast and a lot of plum-cake as
well, and felt none the worse for it.

And soon after that, it was time to be tidied up to go down to the
drawing-room to mamma. Peterkin and Elvira only stayed half-an-hour or
so, but after they had gone to bed we three big ones went into the
library to finish our lessons while papa and mamma were at dinner.
Sometimes we went into the dining-room to dessert, and sometimes we
worked on till mamma called us into the drawing-room: it all depended on
how many lessons we'd got to do, or how fast we had got on with them.
Clement and Blanche were awfully good about that sort of thing, and went
at it steadily, much better than I, I'm afraid, though I could learn
pretty quickly if I chose. But I did not like lessons, especially the
ones we had to do at home, for in these days Clem and I only went to a
day-school and had to bring books and things back with us every
afternoon. And besides these lessons we had to do at home for school, we
had a little extra once or twice a week, as we had French conver