Young Tom Bowling | Page 7

hopping about their cages trying by every means in their power to attract her notice on her entering the shop and coming near them; while the lemon-crested cockatoo, who was christened `Ally Sloper,' on account of his fine flow of language, and a habit he had of ruffling up the feathers round his neck when spoken to, making him look as if he had a particularly high and stiff collar on, would shriek out `Say-rah!' which was mother's name, just as if father were shouting for her to come downstairs in a sort of `reef topsails' on a stormy night sort of voice.
Our pet thrush `Jack' also liked her better than any of us, though he was tame enough to eat out of my hand, giving me a friendly nip with his sharp beak occasionally, just to show what he could do if he had a mind to and was not socially disposed.
But he never nipped Jenny's little fingers--not he!
On the contrary, he used to dance with delight if she only uttered his name in a whisper, chuckling first to express his great pleasure at the sight of her, and then breaking into a regular roulade that wound up with the call `Jenny! Jenny!' or something which we all thought sounded uncommonly like it; for he used to keep it up for a good spell if she went away without speaking to him, or even failed to put in an appearance to wish him "good morning."
Avast there, however.
I'm afraid I am making a long circumbendibus from my original yarn; but, as mother says of father, it runs in the blood, all the Bowlings having their jaw tackle well abreast, and not knowing when to stop when once they begin; so, being a `chip of the old block' and a Bowling all over in my love of talking and love for the sea, I hope you will excuse me and let me start afresh again.
I was saying when I went off my course on this tangent about the birds, that little Jenny stepped in just as father and mother were getting to loggerheads about my going on board the Saint Vincent, the old lady saying she couldn't possibly spare me, and that he, to put it mildly, was not a very sensible person to think so lightly of losing my services in the wherry just when I was beginning, as she pointed out to him, to be of some use to him.
"But it's no good my talking," she cried at the end of a long harangue, to which father politely listened, with his knife and fork expectantly in hand, and his dinner getting colder and colder on the plate before him. "It's just like you Bowlings all over! You're all headstrong and foolish, and always bent on having your own way, in spite of all the good advice one gives you!"
"All right, Sarah," said father, in his quiet way, bowing, wise man that he was, before the storm. "All right."
"No, it's nothing of the sort," retorted mother. "It's all wrong!"
At that moment a happy diversion was made by the lemon-crested cockatoo, who, by reason of his highly respectable deportment and polished manners, had been made free of our parlour, and could hop in and out from the shop when the mood seized him, through a small trapdoor or porthole, originally constructed for a window, and which served `Ally Sloper' as a means of intercommunication between the two apartments, the wily bird being easily able to unlatch at pleasure the swing door of his cage.
"I'll wring your neck!" he screamed in his hoarse, sepulchral voice; "I'll wring your neck! Say-rah! Say-rah!"
This, of course, made us all laugh, even mother joining in, though the joke was certainly against her; and taking advantage of the opportunity thus afforded of `throwing oil on the troubled waters,' little Jenny went on to speak of the advantages to be gained by my going to sea and earning my living as a gallant seaman in the service of my country, pointing out to mother how I had always hankered after father's profession, and that she was sure I would never be contented in any shore billet, and might possibly go to the bad if I had my inclinations thwarted!
"Who knows, too," she added, as a clincher to her argument, "whether Tom may not rise to be a leftennant, ay, and even an admiral, through this good Captain Mordaunt's introduction!"
"Right you are, my lass, bless you!" chimed in father, rising up enthusiastically from his seat and tossing off the glass of beer he held in his hand. "So he will too, you'll see, or I'm a Dutchman. Hurrah, Sarah, here's good luck to the boy and speedy promotion!"
"'Oo-ray, Say-rah!" screamed `Ally Sloper,' the cockatoo, in cordial appreciation, apparently, of