eart. It no sooner knew
that Mrs. Ben Wah wanted a parrot than it hustled about to supply one at
once. The morning mail brought stacks of letters, with offers of money
to buy a parrot. They came from lawyers, business men, and bank
presidents, men who pore over dry ledgers and drive sharp bargains on
'Change, and are never supposed to give a thought to lonely widows
pining away in poor attics. While they were being sorted, a poor little
tramp song-bird flew in through the open window of the Charities
Building in great haste, apparently in search of Mrs. McCutcheon's room.
Its feathers were ruffled and its bangs awry, as if it had not had time
to make its morning toilet, it had come in such haste to see if it would
do. Though it could not talk, it might at least sing to the sick old
woman--sing of the silent forests with the silver lakes deep in their
bosom, where the young bucks trailed the moose and the panther, and
where she listened at the lodge door for their coming; and the song
might bring back the smile to her wan lips. But though it was nearly
green and had tousled top, it was not a parrot, and it would not do. The
young women who write in the big books in the office caught it and put
it in a cage to sing to them instead. In the midst of the commotion came
the parrot itself, big and green, in a "stunning" cage. It was an
amiable bird, despite its splendid get-up, and cocked its crimson head
one side to have it scratched through the bars, and held up one claw, as
if to shake hands.

How to get it to Mrs. Ben Wah's without the shock killing her was the
problem that next presented itself. Mrs. McCutcheon solved it by doing
the cage up carefully in newspaper and taking it along herself. All the
way down the bird passed muffled comments on the Metropolitan Railway
service and on its captivity, to the considerable embarrassment of its
keeper; but they reached the Beach Street tenement and Mrs. Ben Wah's
attic at last. There Mrs. McCutcheon stowed it carefully away in a
corner, while she busied herself about her aged friend.

She was working slowly down through an address which she had designed to
break the thing gently and by degrees, when the parrot, extending a
feeler on its own hook, said "K-r-r-a-a!" behind its paper screen.

Mrs. Ben Wah sat up straight and looked fixedly at the corner. Seeing
the big bundle there, she went over and peered into it. She caught a
quick breath and stared, wide-eyed.

"Where you