The speaker was a cockatoo of the most exquisite shades of cream
colour, salmon and rose, and he had a rose-coloured crest. But lovely as
he was, John Broom's eyes were on another cage, where, silent, solemn,
and sulky, sat a big white one with sulphur-coloured trimmings and
fierce black eyes; and he was so like Miss Betty's pet, that the poor
child's heart bounded as if a hand had been held out to him from home.
"If you let him get at you, you'll not do it a second time, mate," said
the man. "He's the nastiest tempered beast I ever saw. I'd have wrung
his neck long ago if he hadn't such a fine coat."
But John Broom said, as he had said before, "I like him and he'll like
me."
When the cockatoo bit his finger to the bone, the man roared with
laughter, but John Broom did not draw his hand away. He kept it still
at the bird's beak, and with the other he gently scratched him under the
crest and wings. And when the white cockatoo began to stretch out his
eight long toes, as cats clutch with their claws from pleasure, and
chuckled, and sighed, and bit softly without hurting, and laid his head
against the bars till his snow and sulphur feathers touched John Broom's
black locks, the man was amazed.
"Look here, mate," said he, "you've the trick with birds, and no
mistake. I'll sell you this one cheap, and you'll be able to sell him
dear.
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