essor over the edge of my
paper. But what was my horror! It was no longer the professor at all.
It was a huge parrot, a veritable parrot in slippers and
dressing-gown! I dared hardly believe my senses. Was the professor
_really_ not a man, but a parrot? My dear trusted and honored teacher,
whom I had always looked upon as the wisest and most learned of living
men, could it be possible that _he_ was a parrot? And still there he
sat, grave and sedate, a pair of horn spectacles on his large, crooked
beak, a few stiff feathers bristling around his bald crown, and his
small eyes blinking with a sort of meaningless air of confidence, as
I often had seen a parrot's eyes doing.

"My gnome has been playing a trick on me," I thought. "This is
certainly not to see things as they are. If I only had his tarn-cap
once more, he should not recover it so cheaply."

"Well, my boy," began the professor, as he wheeled round in his chair,
and knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the polished andirons which
adorned the empty fire-place. "How is the world using you? Getting
over your German whims, eh?"

Surely the spectacles must in some mysterious way have affected my
ears too. The professor's voice certainly did sound very curious--very
much like the croak of some bird that had learned human language, but
had no notion of what he was saying. The case was really getting
serious. I threw the paper away, stared my teacher full in the face,
but was so covered with confusion that I could hardly utter two
coherent words.

"Yes, yes,--certainly,--professor," I stammered. "German whims?--I
mean things as they are--and--and not as they seem--_das Ding an
sich_--beg your pardon--I am not sure, I--I comprehended your
meaning--beg your pardon?"

"My dear boy," croaked the professor, opening his beak in great
bewilderment, and showing a little thick red tongue, which curved
upward like that of a parrot, "you are certainly not well. Mabel!
Mabel! Come down! James is ill! Yes, you certainly look wretchedly.
Let me feel your pulse."

I suppose my face must have been very much flushed, for the blood had
mounted to my head and throbbed feverishly in my temples. As I heard
the patter of Mabel's feet in the hall, a great dread came over me.
What if she too should turn out to be somebody else--a strange bird or
beast? No, not for all the world would I see Mabel--the dear, blessed
Mabel--any differently from what she had always seemed to me. So I
tore t