"Yes, there ARE plenty," said Polynesia. "But none of them are any good
at all. Now listen, Doctor, and I'll tell you something. Did you know that
animals can talk?"
"I knew that parrots can talk," said the Doctor.
"Oh, we parrots can talk in two languages—people's language and birdlanguage," said Polynesia proudly. "If I say, 'Polly wants a cracker,' you
understand me. But hear this: Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?"
"Good Gracious!" cried the Doctor. "What does that mean?"
"That means, 'Is the porridge hot yet?'—in bird-language."
"My! You don't say so!" said the Doctor. "You never talked that way to
me before."
"What would have been the good?" said Polynesia, dusting some crackercrumbs off her left wing. "You wouldn't have understood me if I had."
"Tell me some more," said the Doctor, all excited; and he rushed over to
the dresser-drawer and came back with the butcher's book and a pencil.
"Now don't go too fast—and I'll write it down. This is interesting—very
interesting—something quite new. Give me the Birds' A.B.C. first—
slowly now."
So that was the way the Doctor came to know that animals had a language
of their own and could talk to one another. And all that afternoon, while it
was raining, Polynesia sat on the kitchen table giving him bird words to
put down in the book.
At tea-time, when the dog, Jip, came in, the parrot said to the Doctor,
"See, HE'S talking to you."
"Looks to me as though he were scratching his ear," said the Doctor.
"But animals don't always speak with their mouths," said the parrot in a
high voice, raising her eyebrows. "They talk with their ears, with their
feet, with their tails—with everything. Sometimes they don't WANT to
make a noise. Do you see now the way he's twitching up one side of his
nose?"
"What's that mean?" asked the Doctor.
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