:

"Oh, there you are! I see you! Now come right here to me, and don't go
away again!"

"Why, I know who _that_ is!" exclaimed Grandma Bell.

Before the children could ask they heard a funny voice say:

"Oh, hello! Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a cracker!"

"Well, you'll get one, and it won't be a sweet cracker, either, if you
fly out of your cage again," said a man's voice. "You'll get a
fire-cracker! Now you flutter right down to me and be good!"

"Hello! Hello!" said the funny voice, and then came a strange laugh.
"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Why--why! It's a _parrot_!" shouted Laddie. "I can see his green
feathers!"

"Yes, and there is Mr. Hixon after him," said Grandma Bell. "You have
been fooled by Bill Hixon's parrot, children, just as you were teased
once before. It wasn't a little boy or girl lost in the woods at all. It
was just the parrot."

"That's just what it was, Mrs. Bell," said Mr. Hixon, and a man stepped
out from behind a tree. "Were you after him, too?" he asked, as he held
out his hand the parrot flew down out of the tree and alighted on his
finger.

"The children, playing in the woods, heard your parrot calling, and
thought it was a lost child," said Mrs. Bunker. "Did he get out of his
cage?"

"That's what he did," said Mr. William Hixon, or "Bill," as his
neighbors called him. "He got out early this morning, and I've been
looking for him ever since. I followed along through these woods,
because a man said he had seen a green bird flying about in here, and,
surely enough, I heard my Polly singing out about being lost, and
wanting some one to come and get her. She always begs that way when she
gets lost."

"We heard her," said Laddie. "But I thought it was a little boy."

"And I thought it was a little girl," added Violet.

Mun Bun and Margy didn't say anything. They just stood and looked at the
green parrot on Mr. Hixon's finger. The bird seemed happy now, and bent
its head over toward its owner.

"She wants it scratched," said Mr. Hixon. "Well, I'll be nice to you
now, but I won't like you if you get out of your cage again," he said.
"She can open the door herself," he explained to Grandma Bell and Mrs.
Bunker.

"She talks very plainly for a parrot," said Grandma Bell. "I remember
the day the six little Bunkers first came, and Polly was in the back of
the auto. We thought it was a child then."

"Yes, Polly is a good talker," said Mr. Hixon, who lived not far from
Grandma Bell's.