ona sat in her own room in close consultation
with Juliana Whipple. Miss Whipple, driving her own car as no other
Whipple could have driven it, had hastened to felicitate the bride.
Tall, gaunt, a little stooped now, her weathered face aglow, she had
ascended the steps to greet the couple. Spike's tenancy of the chair had
been made doubly secure by Winona on the step at his feet.

Juliana embraced Winona and took one of Spike's knotted hands to press
warmly between both her own. Then Winona had dragged her to privacy, and
their talk had now come to a point.

"It's that--that parrot!" exploded Winona, desperately. "I never used to
notice, but you know--that senseless gabble, 'pretty girl, pretty girl,'
and then the thing laughs like a fiend. It would be all right if he
wouldn't laugh. You might think he meant it. And poor Spike is so
sensitive; he gets things you wouldn't think he'd get. That awful bird
might set him to thinking. Now he believes I'm pretty. In spite of
everything I've said to him, he believes it. Well, I'm not going to have
that bird putting any other notion into his mind, not if I have to--"

She broke off, but murder was in her tone.

"I see," said Miss Whipple. "You're right, of course--only you are
pretty, Winona. I never used to think--think about it, I mean, but
you've changed. You needn't be afraid of any parrot."

Winona patted the hand of Miss Whipple, an able hand suggesting that of
Spike in its texture and solidity.

"That's ever so nice of you, but I know all about myself. Spike's eyes
are gone, but that bird is going, too."

"Why not let me take the poor old thing?" said Juliana. "It can say
'pretty girl' to me and laugh its head off if it wants." She hung a
moment on this, searching Winona's face with clear eyes. "I have no
blind husband," she finished.

"You're a dear," said Winona.

"I'm so glad for you," said Juliana.

"I must guard him in so many ways," confided Winona. "He's happy
now--he's forgotten for the moment. But sometimes it comes back on him
terribly--what he is, you know. I've seen him over there lose
control--want to kill himself. He says he can't help such times. It will
seem to him that someone has shut him in a dark room and he must break
down its walls--break out into the light. He would try to break the
walls down--like a caged beast. It wasn't pretty. And I'm his eyes and
all his life, and no old bird is ever going to set him thinking I'm not
perfectly beau