by studying his lessons so good--I
always like a boy that is fond of his books--you can have it for two
dollars and a quarter."

As he had paid but five cents for it this advance in price would be a
fine business speculation. After a little further talk, Mr. Morris
counted out the money, and the man went back to his home doubtless
wishing he had a hundred more redbirds to sell at the same handsome
profit. After he had gone, Mr. Morris went to a box hanging against
the wall, and turning a handle began talking to the box as if it were a
human being. Though it was just a plain wooden box, the admiral said
there was something mysterious about it, for Mr. Morris actually seemed
to be carrying on a conversation with it, though the bird could not
hear what the box answered, but he felt sure it talked back.

Mr. Morris' residence was a fine stone house with wide porches and
sunny bay windows, over which were trained graceful creeping vines. A
boy of about eleven years of age and a very pretty lady stood arm in
arm on the broad steps leading up to the front entrance that evening
when Mr. Morris and the admiral arrived. They were Johnny Morris and
his mother, who had already learned that Mr. Morris had bought the bird
and would bring it when he came to dinner. The admiral discovered the
next day that Mrs. Morris owned a box like the one at the office, into
which she talked, and that it was called a telephone. He often
mentioned this mysterious box as one of the most remarkable things he
saw during his stay among men.

Johnny Morris capered and danced and jumped so hard in the exuberance
of his joy at receiving the redbird that all the way to the sitting
room his mother was coaxing him to be quiet.

"Don't act so foolishly," she begged; but he only capered and kicked up
his heels still harder. When the cage was placed on a stand in the bay
window he pranced around it, whistled and chirped, threw the bottom of
the cage floor full of seed and splashed the water about so recklessly
in his attempts to be friendly as nearly to frighten the poor admiral
to pieces.

"Now, Johnny, don't," pleaded his mother.

"Johnny, don't do that," commanded his father every few minutes.

It was a constant "Don't, Johnny, do this" and "Don't, Johnny, do
that," until, the admiral said, the conversation was so mixed up with
"Don't-Johnny's" as made it almost unintelligible. Of course these
expostulations made not a bit of impression on J