me eating with my knife. Well, there it was, pick and
nag everlasting. But I s'pose, Anne, to be fair, _I_ was cantankerous
too. I didn't try to improve as I might have done . . . I just got cranky
and disagreeable when she found fault. I told her one day she hadn't
complained of my grammar when I proposed to her. It wasn't an overly
tactful thing to say. A woman would forgive a man for beating her sooner
than for hinting she was too much pleased to get him. Well, we bickered
along like that and it wasn't exactly pleasant, but we might have got
used to each other after a spell if it hadn't been for Ginger. Ginger
was the rock we split on at last. Emily didn't like parrots and she
couldn't stand Ginger's profane habits of speech. I was attached to the
bird for my brother the sailor's sake. My brother the sailor was a pet
of mine when we were little tads and he'd sent Ginger to me when he was
dying. I didn't see any sense in getting worked up over his swearing.
There's nothing I hate worse'n profanity in a human being, but in a
parrot, that's just repeating what it's heard with no more understanding
of it than I'd have of Chinese, allowances might be made. But Emily
couldn't see it that way. Women ain't logical. She tried to break Ginger
of swearing but she hadn't any better success than she had in trying to
make me stop saying 'I seen' and 'them things.' Seemed as if the more
she tried the worse Ginger got, same as me.

"Well, things went on like this, both of us getting raspier, till the
CLIMAX came. Emily invited our minister and his wife to tea, and another
minister and HIS wife that was visiting them. I'd promised to put Ginger
away in some safe place where nobody would hear him . . . Emily wouldn't
touch his cage with a ten-foot pole . . . and I meant to do it, for I
didn't want the ministers to hear anything unpleasant in my house. But
it slipped my mind . . . Emily was worrying me so much about clean collars
and grammar that it wasn't any wonder . . . and I never thought of that
poor parrot till we sat down to tea. Just as minister number one was in
the very middle of saying grace, Ginger, who was on the veranda outside
the dining room window, lifted up HIS voice. The gobbler had come into
view in the yard and the sight of a gobbler always had an unwholesome
effect on Ginger. He surpassed himself that time. You can smile, Anne,
and I don't deny I've chuckled some over it since myself, but at the
time I felt almos