parrot.

The aforesaid Martin whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for was one of
those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and are, I fear,
still) quite out of their places at a public school. If we knew how to
use our boys, Martin would have been seized upon and educated as a
natural philosopher. He had a passion for birds, beasts, and insects,
and knew more of them and their habits than any one in Rugby, except
perhaps the Doctor, who knew everything. He was also an experimental
chemist on a small scale, and had made unto himself an electric
machine, from which it was his greatest pleasure and glory to
administer small shocks to any small boys who were rash enough to
venture into his study. And this was by no means an adventure free
from excitement; for, besides the probability of a snake dropping on
to your head, or twining lovingly up your leg, or a rat getting into
your breeches' pocket in search of food, there was the animal and
chemical odor to be faced, which always hung about the den, and the
chance of being blown up in some of the many experiments which Martin
was always trying, with the most wonderful results in the shape of
explosions and smells that mortal boy ever heard of. Of course, poor
Martin, in consequence of his pursuits, had become an Ishmaelite in
the house. In the first place, he half poisoned all his neighbors, and
they in turn were always on the look-out to pounce upon any of his
numerous live stock and drive him frantic by enticing his pet old
magpie out of his window into a neighboring study, and making the
disreputable old bird drunk on toast soaked in beer and sugar. Then
Martin, for his sins, inhabited a study looking into a small court
some ten feet across, the window of which was completely commanded by
those of the studies opposite in the sick-room row, these latter being
at a slightly higher elevation. East and another boy of an equally
tormenting and ingenious turn of mind, now lived exactly opposite, and
had expended huge pains and time in the preparation of instruments of
annoyance for the behoof of Martin and his live colony. One morning an
old basket made its appearance, suspended by a short cord, outside
Martin's window, in which were deposited an amateur nest[4] containing
four young, hungry jackdaws, the pride and glory of Martin's life for
the time being, and which he was currently asserted to have hatched
upon his own person. Early in the morning and late at night h