“Polynesia has come back!” he cried. “Imagine it. Jip says she has just arrived at the house. My! And it’s five years since I saw her—Excuse me a minute.”
He turned as if to go back home. But the parrot, Polynesia, was already flying towards us. The Doctor clapped his hands like a child getting a new toy; while the swarm of sparrows in the roadway fluttered, gossiping, up on to the fences, highly scandalized to see a gray and scarlet parrot skimming down an English lane.
On she came, straight on to the Doctor’s shoulder, where she immediately began talking a steady stream in a language I could not understand. She seemed to have a terrible lot to say. And very soon the Doctor had forgotten all about me and my squirrel and Jip and everything else; till at length the bird clearly asked him something about me.
“Oh excuse me, Stubbins!” said the Doctor. “I was so interested listening to my old friend here. We must get on and see this squirrel of yours—Polynesia, this is Thomas Stubbins.”
The parrot, on the Doctor’s shoulder, nodded gravely towards me and then, to my great surprise, said quite plainly in English,
“How do you do? I remember the night you were born. It was a terribly cold winter. You were a very ugly baby.”
“Stubbins is anxious to learn animal language,” said the Doctor. “I was just telling him about you and the lessons you gave me when Jip ran up and told us you had arrived.”
“Well,” said the parrot, turning to me, “I may have started the Doctor learning but I never could have done even that, if he hadn’t first taught me to understand what I was saying when I spoke English. You see, many parrots can talk like a person, but very few of them understand what they are saying. They just say it because—well, because they fancy it is smart or, because they know they will get crackers given them.”
By this time we had turned and were going towards my home with Jip running in front and Polynesia still perched on the Doctor’s shoulder. The bird chattered incessantly, mostly about Africa; but now she spoke in English, out of politeness to me.
“How is Prince Bumpo getting on?” asked the Doctor.
“Oh, I’m glad you asked me,” said Polynesia. “I almost forgot to tell you. What do you think?—Bumpo is in England!”
“In England!—You don’t say!” cried the Doctor. “What on earth is he doing here?”
“His father, the king, sent him here to a place called—er—Bullford, I think it was—to study lessons.”
“Bullford!—Bullford!” muttered the Doctor. “I never heard of the place—Oh, you mean Oxford.”
“Yes, that’s the place—Oxford,” said Polynesia. “I knew it had cattle in it somewhere. Oxford—that’s the place he’s gone to.”
“Well, well,” murmured the Doctor. “Fancy Bumpo studying at Oxford—Well, well!”
“There were great doings in Jolliginki when he left. He was scared to death to come. He was the first man from that country to go abroad. He thought he was going to be eaten by white cannibals or something. You know what those niggers are—that ignorant! Well!—But his father made him come. He said that all the black kings were sending their sons to Oxford now. It was the fashion, and he would have to go. Bumpo wanted to bring his six wives with him. But the king wouldn’t let him do that either. Poor Bumpo went off in tears—and everybody in the palace was crying too. You never heard such a hullabaloo.”
“Do you know if he ever went back in search of The Sleeping Beauty?” asked the Doctor.
“Oh yes,” said Polynesia—“the day after you left. And a good thing for him he did: the king got to know about his helping you to escape; and he was dreadfully wild about it.”
“And The Sleeping Beauty?—did he ever find her?”
“Well, he brought back something which he said was The Sleeping Beauty. Myself, I think it was an albino niggeress. She had red hair and the biggest feet you ever saw. But Bumpo was no end pleased with her and finally married her amid great rejoicings. The feastings lasted seven days. She became his chief wife and is now known out there as the Crown-Princess Bumpah—you accent the last syllable.”
“And tell me, did he remain white?”
“Only for about three months,” said the parrot. “After that his face slowly returned to its natural color. It was just as well. He was so conspicuous in his bathing-suit the way he was, with his face white and the rest of him black.”
“And how is Chee-Chee getting on?—Chee-Chee,” added the Doctor in explanation to me, “was a pet monkey I had years ago. I left him too in Africa when I came away.”
“Well,” said Polynesia frowning—“Chee-Chee is not entirely happy. I saw a good deal of him the last few years. He got dreadfully homesick for you and the house and the garden. It’s funny, but I was just the same way myself. You remember how crazy I was to get back to the dear old land? And Africa is a wonderful country—I don’t care what anybody says. Well, I thought I was going to have a perfectly grand time. But somehow—I don’t know—after a few weeks it seemed to get tiresome. I just couldn’t seem to settle down. Well, to make a long story short, one night I made up my mind that I’d come back here and find you. So I hunted up old Chee-Chee and told him about it. He said he didn’t blame me a bit—felt
