The Common Law

Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves.

"This is exceedingly grand," said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour around the pretty little sitting room. "We can have all kinds of a rough house now." And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the rug and very gravely turned a somersault.

"Sam! Behave! Or I'll set my parrot on you!" exclaimed Valerie.

Ogilvy sat up and inspected the parrot.

"You know," he said, "I believe I've seen that parrot somewhere."

"Impossible, my dear friend—unless you've been in my bedroom."

Ogilvy got up, dusted his trowsers, and walked over to the parrot.

"Well it looks like a bird I used to know—I—it certainly resembles—" He hesitated, then addressing the bird:

"Hello, Leparello—you old scoundrel!" he said, cautiously.

"Forget it!" muttered the bird, cocking his head and lifting first one slate-coloured claw from his perch, then the other;—"forget it! Help! Oh, very well. God bless the ladies!"

"Where on earth did you ever before see my parrot?" asked Valerie, astonished. Ogilvy appeared to be a little out of countenance, too.

"Oh, I really don't remember exactly where I did see him," he tried to explain; and nobody believed him.

"Sam! Answer me!"

"Well, where did you get him?"

"José Querida gave Leparello to me."

Annan and Ogilvy exchanged the briefest glance—a perfectly blank glance.

"It probably isn't the same bird," said Ogilvy, carelessly. "There are plenty of parrots that talk—plenty of 'em named Leparello, probably."

"Sam, how can you be so untruthful! Rita, hold him tightly while I pull his ears!"

It was a form of admonition peculiarly distasteful to Ogilvy, and he made a vain effort to escape.

"Now, Sam, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Quick, or I'll tweak!"

"All right, then," he said, maliciously, "Querida's got relatives in Oporto who send him these kind of parrots occasionally. He names 'em all Leparello, teaches 'em all the same jargon, and—gives 'em to girls!"

"How funny," said Valerie. She looked at Sam, aware of something else in his grin, and gave an uncertain little laugh.

He sat down, rubbing his ear-lobes, the malicious grin still lingering on his countenance. What he had not told her was that Querida's volcanically irregular affairs of the heart always ended with the gift of an Oporto parrot. Marianne Valdez owned one. So did Mazie Gray.

His cynical gaze rested on Valerie reflectively. He had heard plenty of rumours and whispers concerning her; and never believed any of them. He could not believe now that the gift of this crimson, green and sky-blue creature signified anything. Yet Querida had known her as long as anybody except Neville.

"When did he give you this parrot?" he asked, carelessly.

"Oh, one day just before I was going to Atlantic City. He was coming down, too, to stay a fortnight while I was there, and come back with me; and he said that He had intended to give the parrot to me after our return, but that he might as well give it to me before I went."

"I see," said Ogilvy, thoughtfully. A few moments later, as he and Annan were leaving the house, he said:

"It looks to me as though our friend, José, had taken too much for granted."

"It looks like it," nodded Annan, smiling unpleasantly.

"Too sure of conquest," added Ogilvy. "Got the frozen mitt, didn't he?"

"And the Grand Cordon of the double cross."

"And the hot end of the poker; yes?"

"Sure; and it's still sizzling." Ogilvy cast a gleeful glance back at the house:

"Fine little girl. All white. Yes? No?"

"All white," nodded Annan…. "And Neville isn't that kind of a man, anyway."

Ogilvy said: "So you think so, too?"

"Oh, yes. He's crazy about her, and she isn't taking Sundays out if it's his day in…. Only, what's the use?"

"No use…. I guess Kelly Neville has seen as many artists who've married their models as we have. Besides, his people are frightful snobs."

Annan, walking along briskly, swung his stick vigorously:

"She's a sweet little thing," he said.

"I know it. It's going to be hard for her. She can't stand for a mutt—and it's the only sort that will marry her…. I don't know—she's a healthy kind of girl—but God help her if she ever really falls in love with one of our sort."

"I think she's done it," said Annan.

"Kelly!"

"Doesn't it look like it?"

"Oh, it will wear off without any harm to either of them. That little girl is smart, all right; she'll never waste an evening screaming for the moon. And Kelly Neville is—is Kelly Neville—a dear fellow, so utterly absorbed in the career of a brilliant and intelligent young artist named Louis Neville, that if the entire earth blew up he'd begin a new canvas the week after…. Not that I think him cold-hearted—no, not even selfish as that little bounder Allaire says—but he's a man who has never yet had time to spare."

"They're the most hopeless," observed Annan—"the men who haven't time to spare. Because it takes only a moment to say, 'Hello, old man! How in hell are you?' It takes only a moment to put yourself, mentally, in some less lucky man's shoes; and be friendly and sorry and interested."

"He's a pretty decent sort," murmured Ogilvy. "Anyway, that Valerie child is safe enough in temporarily adoring Kelly Neville."

* * * * *

The "Valerie child," in a loose, rose-silk peignoir, cross-legged on her bed, was sewing industriously on her week's mending. Rita, in dishabille, lay across the foot of the bed nibbling bonbons and reading the evening paper.

They had dined in their living room, a chafing dish aiding. Afterward Valerie went over her weekly accounts and had now taken up her regular mending; and there she sat, sewing away, and singing in her clear, young voice, the old madrigal: