“Perhaps he would like me to think I do,” said Jack. “Perhaps you both would.”

“Oh, Jack!” cried Edna. She was deeply hurt, and not without reason, for it showed that Jack was still thinking of a ridiculous mistake he had made, a real mistake, of the sort that young husbands sometimes do make, when they come suddenly into a room and people are startled without any reason for it. Charlie was young and free and easy and good-looking, and he would put his hand on your shoulder without even thinking about it, and nobody minded.

“I should not have said that,” said Jack.

“No, indeed you shouldn’t,” said Edna, and she was right.

The parrot said nothing at all. All these days, he had been moping and ailing, and seemed to have forgotten even how to ask for sugar. He only groaned and moaned to himself, ruffled up his feathers, and every now and then shook his head in the most rueful, miserable way you can possibly imagine.

One day, however, when Jack came home from work, Edna put her finger to her lips and beckoned him to the window. “Watch Tom,” she whispered.

Jack peered out. There was the old bird, lugubriously climbing down from his perch and picking some dead stalks from the vine, which he carried up till he gained a corner where the balustrade ran into the wall, and added his gatherings to others that were already there. He trod round and round, twisted his stalks in and out, and, always with the same doleful expression, paid great attention to the nice disposition of a feather or two, a piece of wool, a fragment of cellophane. There was no doubt about it.

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Jack.

“He’s making a nest!” cried Edna.

“He!” cried Jack. “He! I like that. The old imposter! The old male impersonator! She’s going to lay an egg. Thomasina—that’s her name from now on.”

Thomasina it was. Two or three days later the matter was settled beyond the shadow of a doubt. There, one morning, in the ramshackle nest, was an egg.

“I thought she was sick because of that shaking she got,” said Jack. “She was broody, that’s all.”

“It’s a monstrous egg,” said Edna. “Poor birdie!”

“What do you expect, after God knows how many years?” said Jack, laughing. “Some birds lay eggs nearly as big as themselves—the kiwi or something. Still, I must admit it’s a whopper.”

“She doesn’t look well,” said Edna.

Indeed, the old parrot looked almost as sick as a parrot can be, which is several times sicker than any other living creature. Her eyes closed up, her head sank, and if a finger was put out to scratch her she turned her beak miserably away.