ed?" he asked of the stable-boy, who had come with
the pony-carriage to meet him.

"Yessir, came down by the two-fifteen. Your parrot's dead." The boy
made the latter announcement with the relish which his class finds in
proclaiming a catastrophe.

"My parrot dead?" said Groby. "What caused its death?"

"The ipe," said the boy briefly.

"The ipe?" queried Groby. "Whatever's that?"

"The ipe what the Colonel brought down with him," came the rather
alarming answer.

"Do you mean to say my brother is ill?" asked Groby. "Is it something
infectious?"

"Th' Colonel's so well as ever he was," said the boy; and as no further
explanation was forthcoming Groby had to possess himself in mystified
patience till he reached home. His brother was waiting for him at the
hall door.

"Have you heard about the parrot?" he asked at once. "'Pon my soul I'm
awfully sorry. The moment he saw the monkey I'd brought down as a
surprise for you he squawked out 'Rats to you, sir!' and the blessed
monkey made one spring at him, got him by the neck and whirled him
round like a rattle. He was as dead as mutton by the time I'd got him
out of the little beggar's paws. Always been such a friendly little
beast, the monkey has, should never have thought he'd got it in him to
see red like that. Can't tell you how sorry I feel about it, and now
of course you'll hate the sight of the monkey."

"Not at all," said Groby sincerely. A few hours earlier the tragic end
which had befallen his parrot would have presented itself to him as a
calamity; now it arrived almost as a polite attention on the part of
the Fates.

"The bird was getting old, you know," he went on, in explanation of his
obvious lack of decent regret at the loss of his pet. "I was really
beginning to wonder if it was an unmixed kindness to let him go on
living till he succumbed to old age. What a charming little monkey!"
he added, when he was introduced to the culprit.

The new-comer was a small, long-tailed monkey from the Western
Hemisphere, with a gentle, half-shy, half-trusting manner that
instantly captured Groby's confidence; a student of simian character
might have seen in the fitful red light in its eyes some indication of
the underlying temper which the parrot had so rashly put to the test
with such dramatic consequences for itself. The servants, who had come
to regard the defunct bird as a regular member of the household, and
one who gave really very little t