he could not very well have caught cold. It was a very pretty
shawl, with goldy marks or patterns on it. It was like one grandmamma
had been sent a present of from India, and afterwards Margaret told me
hers had come from India too. And it suited her, somehow, even though
she was only a thin, pale little girl.

She smiled when she saw us, though she did not speak till we were near
enough to hear what she said without her calling out. And when we
stopped in front of her house, she said--

'I think you might come inside the garden. We could talk better.'

So we did, first glancing up at the next-door balcony, to see if the
parrot was there.

Yes, he was, but not as far out as usual, and there was a cloth, or
something, half-down round his cage, to keep him warmer, I suppose.

He was quite silent, but Margaret nodded her head up towards him.

'He told me you were coming,' she cried, 'though it wasn't in a very
polite way. He croaked out--"Naughty boys! naughty boys!"'

We all three laughed a little.

'And now,' Margaret went on, 'I daresay he won't talk at all, all the
time you are here.'

'But will he understand what we say?' asked Peterkin, rather anxiously.

Margaret shook her head.

[Illustration: PETE HELD OUT HIS BROWN-PAPER PARCEL. 'THIS IS THE
POETRY-BOOK,' HE SAID.--p. 97.]

'I really don't know,' she replied. 'We had better talk in rather low
voices. I don't _think_,' she went on, almost in a whisper, 'that he is
fairy enough to hear if we speak very softly.'

Peterkin gave a sort of spring of delight.

'Oh!' he exclaimed, 'I am _so_ glad you think he is fairyish, too.'

'Of course I do,' said she; 'that's partly what I wanted to tell you.'

We came closer to the window. Margaret looked at us again in her
examining way, without speaking, for a minute, and before she said
anything, Pete held out his brown-paper parcel.

'This is the poetry-book,' he said, 'and I've put a mark in the place
where it's about my name.'

He pulled off his cap as he handed the packet to her, and stood with his
curly wig looking almost red in the sunlight, though it was not very
bright.

'Put it on again,' said Margaret, in her little queer way, meaning his
cap. 'And thank you very much, Perkin, for remembering to bring it. I
think I should like to call you "Perkin," if you don't mind. I like to
have names of my own for some people, and I really thought yours was
Perkin.'

I wished to myself she would have a name